


Mesozoic Maze

by Veldeia



Series: DinoGate [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Daniel Jackson/Jack O'Neill Friendship, Dinosaurs, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-15
Updated: 2006-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 23:56:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3956713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veldeia/pseuds/Veldeia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rainforest, ruins, dinosaurs - what more could an accident-prone SG-team possibly ask for?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mesozoic Maze

"Doesn't look like the top pick for tropical gate holiday trips," Colonel Jack O'Neill commented, as SG-1 made their way down the long, gently sloping stone ramp.

There was a clean area right in front of the gate, where the vortex had cleared off all plant growth. The rainforest was everywhere around it, a thick web of countless greens and browns and little spots of other colors. It hugged the edges of the gate's ring, and the DHD was probably hidden inside it. Jack couldn't see one, but it had to be there. Of course it was there.

The MALP had only reached the foot of the ramp. It was too big and clumsy and still not powerful enough to force its way through the thick mass of trees and bushes and lianas and flowers.

Daniel had already made his way down the ramp, and was peering eagerly at the green wall. "So, which way to the ruins?"

When the MALP hadn't told them much, except that the place was a tropical paradise, they'd sent through a UAV. It had revealed a very interesting something that lay a bit over a day's walk away from the gate. It was a vast, rectangular something, over half a mile long, and high enough that its top rose above the green canopy. If it wasn't artificial, then it was the weirdest and hugest bit of plant life or the most amazingly geometrical rock formation anyone had ever seen.

"Straight ahead, for starters," Sam answered the question.

Daniel was about to plunge face-first into the greenness, so Jack leaped ahead and stopped him. "Wait a sec, Daniel. I'll take the lead."

From up close, the plant growth wasn't as thick as he'd thought. There was actually some room between the tree trunks. He picked the widest space he could see, and stepped through it, into the rainforest.

He took few more steps ahead, and turned to look back. He saw his team behind him, following his lead. Behind them, the looming ring of the gate was barely visible. But right next to Carter, there was a smaller dark shape in the greenery.

"Carter - on your left. That the DHD?"

She turned, stepped closer, and pushed aside a set of huge leaves and a vine with vivid pink flowers. It was the DHD all right, and it didn't look broken, though it was pretty clear no one had used it in a while.

"Let's see if this thing still works," Carter muttered.

Daniel nodded, approached the DHD as well and started dialing out.

Jack waited, feeling just slightly anxious. They had no reason to expect that it wouldn't work. Even if it wouldn't, they could dial out manually. It'd just be a bit harder. But there was no need to worry. He saw the flash of blue between the leaves, and heard the familiar whoosh of the opening vortex.

"It appears to be functional," Teal'c stated the obvious.

Time to say a few words to the folks back home. Jack flicked on his radio. "SG-1 to SGC. O'Neill here. Enjoying the tropic. Everything looks fine. We're about to start our walk to the ruins."

"SG-1, this is Hammond. Proceed at will. Next communication in 6 hours."

"Will do. SG-1 out. - So, kids. Let's get going. Straight ahead, into the jungle."

  


* * *

  


This place was incredible. So green. Daniel had spent the most important years of his life in deserts - the Egypt of his childhood, and then the dunes of Abydos. He knew well that sand could cover things, and that shifting storms could reveal unexpected ruins. Here, he could just begin to guess what the vivid green might hide. Fair-sized buildings would be completely lost within it, and they could just walk right past them without ever noticing.

He liked the rainforest, he wouldn't complain about the temperature, but he could definitely do without the humidity. His clothes were already damp and sticking to his skin, though they'd hardly walked a hundred paces from the gate.

After another ten paces, Jack held up his hand to stop them, and then signaled for silence, holding a finger over his mouth.

There was something in the thick, high bushes to their right, rustling, making the leaves shiver. Could be the natives of the planet - Daniel was eager to see what they were like. He pictured them as somewhat similar to Amazonian Indians on Earth. Of course, it might just be an animal as well.

Something pushed its way through the foliage. A small, lizard-like head emerged at about knee-height. Just an animal. Possibly a snake. It was light green with darker spots, fitting perfectly into the surrounding forest, except for the pair of bright black eyes. It peered curiously at Jack.

The creature stepped entirely out of the bush. It definitely wasn't a snake. At a quick glance, it looked like a lizard, but there was something odd about it. Its hind legs were thick and looked strong, while the front ones were thinner, shorter - and they weren't touching the ground. The creature walked on two legs.

The not-quite-lizard approached Jack, and two others just like it appeared from the bushes behind it. SG-1 stayed frozen on their spots. These little bright-green not-lizards didn't look particularly dangerous, but they'd learned to be smarter than to judge things by their looks. These were alien things on an alien planet, so, who knew.

The first creature nudged Jack's knee with its snout. Jack promptly brought his gun to point at it. At the sudden movement, the creature stopped, stood straight on its legs and hooted. The other two jerked up as well. All three creatures fled, moving in a coordinated manner, as a pack.

"Soo... Thoughts, anyone? Animals? Aliens?" Jack asked when creatures had disappeared into the bushes where they'd come from.

Daniel really had no idea. The creatures might have been trying to communicate, or then they could've just been like any Earth animals, curious about these new things they'd met in their forest. There had been something strangely familiar about them, but that wasn't much to go on.

"Definitely aliens," he just said. "The interesting question is, how smart."

"Didn't look very smart to me," Jack replied. "Let's move on, campers."

  


* * *

  


Teal'c was certain that this was not the first time he saw creatures like the three they had encountered. He had seen something similar before. He simply could not recall when, or where. During his years as a Jaffa, he had not spent time studying animals. He had time to try and think of this as they walked on in the lush forest. They had been walking for an hour or so, when he heard an unusual sound, and called for the others to stop and listen.

The sound came again, a high-pitched, melodic howl. It did not remind Teal'c of anything he had heard before. It was repeated once more, this time, nearer to them.

Colonel O'Neill motioned with hand signals that they should move closer, to try and see what was the source of the sound. They proceeded in single file, brushing aside branches and bushes.

After a while, Teal'c saw the branches above them move, as if shaken by something. He kept staring at them, scanning for any hint of who or what might be there. His gaze fell on a lizard-like face, well above and ahead of them. It was somewhat like the smaller animals they had seen before, but much larger. The rest of the team saw it as well, and stopped.

The large lizard-like animal was eating tree-leaves. It turned, moved to another tree, and Teal'c got a good look at its head. It was actually quite different from the small creatures. It had a long, bony crest that continued in a graceful arc beyond its head. It looked familiar, and now, Teal'c knew where he had seen these things before. Not during his time as a Jaffa, but after that, in the world of the Tau'ri.

He motioned to the others that they should retreat. He did not wish to speak so close to the animal. It was likely to be peaceful, but there was no need to frighten it.

"I believe this animal to be what is called a Parasaurolophus," Teal'c told the others when he considered they were far enough.

"Come again, Teal'c?" Captain Carter asked, her voice overlapping O'Neill's confused question,

"A para-saw-what?"

"Parasaurolophus. It is a dinosaur," he explained.

He had run across these ancient beasts first in TV-programs and literature aimed at young children, and, since he had found them intriguing, he had sought some additional information. It had not been out of mere curiosity, but also because of some ancient stories he had heard, which featured reptilian creatures very much resembling these dinosaurs.

"Right, of course!" Daniel Jackson uttered eagerly. "I figured there was something familiar about them. The smaller things were just, well, smaller ones."

"I cannot recall the name of their species," Teal'c announced with some regret.

"Dinosaurs - as in, Barney and friends?" O'Neill asked, calling to mind one of the television shows Teal'c had seen.

"Indeed, or at least the resemblance is great."

"Dinosaurs," O'Neill repeated. "Sweet."

  


* * *

  


Though Sam had always had a scientific mindset, she'd never been much of a naturalist. The more she saw of this place, the more she was starting to regret it. This would be a paleontologist's paradise. Not that it wasn't pretty close to paradise, just in general.

The nature was amazing. The butterflies were bigger than Sam's head, and the dragonflies had bodies thicker than her wrist. During their march through the rainforest, SG-1 had come across several paths. They'd figured the dinosaurs had made them, but it had still been a slight shock when they'd actually met a long procession of elephant-like, three-horned dinosaurs walking slowly along one of them. While they had waited for the animals to pass, Teal'c had named the species as Triceratops. Daniel had added that the name simply meant they had three horns.

Teal'c had taken them all by surprise when he'd revealed how much he knew about these animals. He'd been able to name almost every single one they had seen, and, even more importantly, he could tell whether they were supposed to be dangerous. They'd only met plant-eaters so far. Even the tank-sized, spike-covered Ankylosaurus, which had been one of the scariest indigenous creatures Sam had seen on any planet, had just peered at them without much interest and went on munching leaves.

All in all, SG-1 had done little more than walked all day long, but it had certainly not been dull. The only shadow in the paradise was the rain. It had begun after half a day's walk, and it showed no sign of ceasing. It was a rainforest, after all. It was warm enough, but even though they'd known to expect it and brought rain clothes, they were soaked through and through, as if they'd been swimming.

When the green light around them started to fade into a green twilight, Colonel O'Neill decided that they'd start looking for a campsite. According to the map based on the UAV-feed, they were still several hours away from the ruins, and they weren't in a hurry. They could just as well get a good night's sleep before they got to work.

They found a sheltered place under a huge tree and set up camp there. With the continuous rain, there was no way they could get a fire started. At least they had self-heating, just-add-water MREs, so they could get nearly warm food, and it was dry enough inside the tent. Hopefully the rain would stop before the morning.

Teal'c took the first watch. Even though Sam really wanted to change out of her wet clothes, she also wanted to ask him a few things she'd been thinking about, so she stayed outside.

"Teal'c, I've been wondering... Do you think all these animals are exactly like the ones that used to live on Earth?"

"As no one has ever seen a living dinosaur, I cannot be certain, Captain Carter. Nevertheless, these creatures are an exact match to the approximations that paleontologists have built based on the fossilized remains that have been found."

"Don't you think that's a bit odd? That creatures that were extinct, what, tens of millions of years ago, are still alive, exactly the same, on an alien planet?"

"I do find this unusual. However, all the dinosaurs we have encountered seem to be from the last period of time before their extinction, the late Cretaceous period. Perhaps they were brought here so that they would be saved from the fate their kind faced on Earth."

"Sounds like a good explanation, but who brought them? I can't see the Goa'uld doing something like this - what would they gain from it? And how did they get the animals here? Surely not through the gate. Probably with a ship. A real Noah's Ark."

"Indeed. I have also been wondering. So far, we have encountered no carnivorous dinosaurs. It is not completely unexpected, since there are likely to be many more herbivores. Still, I did expect to meet at least some small ones."

"Maybe whoever brought them here just picked plant-eaters - but no, wait, of course not. There'd be nothing to keep the population in control without them. Unless the ones responsible for this all do that themselves. Maybe they're still around here, somewhere."

"Perhaps the ruins shall reveal the history of this planet."

"I really hope they-" Sam fell silent. She thought she'd felt something. The ground shaking slightly, like in a barely noticeable earthquake. She frowned, and cast an inquiring glance at Teal'c. Teal'c raised his eyebrows and nodded.

They both picked up their guns, just in case, and waited. The Colonel and Daniel, who had been talking in low voices inside the tent, had fallen silent as well.

A good while passed, and nothing happened.

O'Neill peered out of the tent. "Carter? Did we have any clue that there might be earthquakes on this planet?"

"No, sir. And I'm not entirely sure it was an-"

There it was again. A shiver running through forest floor.

Whatever it was, Sam didn't like it.

O'Neill disappeared into the tent.

The next time she felt the ground tremble, a sound followed the feeling. Rustling branches, something rushing through the forest, not very far from them. When it paused for a second, an ear-splitting roar cut the air. 

Both Carter and Teal'c kept their P90's pointed towards the direction of the quickly approaching sound.

She could see the nearby trees shaking, the leaves moving. Just like earlier on the same day, a reptilian head emerged through the foliage. But this creature was not small, cute and shy. It was a monstrous beast, its head bigger than their tent, its mouth filled with rows of huge teeth that shone pale in the green gloom.

Without a moment's hesitation, they opened fire at the beast. They could've been tossing it with pebbles, for all the effect it had. 

The dinosaur roared at them, and started closing in, with heavy, ground-shaking steps.

O'Neill was making his way out of the tent, dragging Daniel after him.

"Run! Carter, Teal'c, get the hell out of here," he yelled.

That really wasn't an order Carter wanted to obey, but she had little choice. With the primeval fear this creature raised in her, running seemed like the natural thing to do. So, she ran into the darkening night, right after Teal'c. She could only hope that the dinosaur would lose them. They were a lot smaller than it was, and though they were probably slower, at least they were more agile.

She ran, hardly thinking anything, except that they had to get away and fast. She still heard the beast roaring every now and then, but she thought they were growing their distance to it. All she saw was Teal'c's vague figure making its way through the forest, several paces ahead of her.

She had no idea how long they'd been going, when she finally noticed Teal'c was slowing down.

"I do not think the Tyrannosaur is following us," he told her. He didn't even sound out of breath. And he gave a name to the beast. Tyrannosaur. It sounded suitable.

"Yeah - yeah, I haven't heard it in a while... Sir?" she turned to look behind her.

She had been so sure Daniel and O'Neill were right behind them that she hadn't even thought about it. But they weren't. There was no one there, and no sounds in the darkness, except for a solitary bird, and the ceaselessly buzzing insects.

"Oh no..."

"Captain Carter, Colonel O'Neill is a great warrior and skilled in survival. It is most likely that he and Daniel Jackson escaped as well, only to a direction different from ours."

"I just wish we could know for sure. But if they're still on the run... Or if they're hiding - We can't risk calling them. Maybe we'd better wait for the morning."

"I agree. Now, we must find a suitable location for spending the night. Preferably one that will shelter us from other possible attacks."

They walked on in silence, wary of any sounds that might signal another Tyrannosaur, or something equally dangerous. The darkness had fallen, and it was hard to see a thing, let alone find a good, safe spot for sleeping. And it was still raining. She hadn't paid attention to it when they'd been running, but now she realized she was splattered with mud all over. Not to mention that she was dead tired - they'd already spent the entire day walking.

After a while, she noticed she'd been trudging on without one single thought. Teal'c was still scanning the surroundings actively. She wasn't helping a lot. Without explaining, he suddenly took a sharp turn to the right. She just followed.

"I believe we have found a shelter for the night, as well as located the ruins," he announced.

She peered towards whatever he was looking at, but she couldn't see anything distinguishable in the darkness. Maybe his Jaffa eyesight was that crucial bit better than her normal human eyes.

He stepped through a dark space between two trees, and she followed. Only when she was right there, going through it herself, she noticed that this particular dark space was actually a huge doorway.

"We really ran all the way to the ruins? Wow," she muttered to herself.

"So it would appear."

It was just as dark inside as outside. There were plants growing here as well, bushes, small trees and low plants covering the floor like a rug. Sam found the edge of the doorway, then the thick stone wall continuing from it. She began tracing the wall onwards with her fingers. Teal'c followed her. It seemed to go on indefinitely. The wall felt smooth and moist. Every now and then there were breaks in the surface, which she took to be seams between large tiles.

"We should rest, Captain Carter."

"No, I want to see how far this goes on... It can't go on forever."

"It could go on for over half a mile."

He was right, and she was just considering that they could drop down right where they were and go to sleep, when her hand met the corner of the room, or hall, or ruin. Whatever. She slid down, resting her back against the wall. Teal'c sat down next to her.

They had abandoned most of their belongings when they'd started running. They had no dry clothes, let alone sleeping bags. Not to mention that she was extremely worried about what had happened to the rest of SG-1. They might be safely asleep already, somewhere else in the rainforest. Or - she didn't want to think about any other options.

Despite the circumstances, she was so tired that she fell asleep the moment she closed her eyes.

  


* * *

  


"Daniel, come on!" Jack shouted furiously. Daniel obviously hadn't got the slightest idea of what they were facing, and how near the creature was. He was struggling to get his pack on. And they really hadn't got the time for that.

"Run! Carter, Teal'c, get the hell out of here," Jack yelled his orders at the other two members of his team. He reached for Daniel's hand, and pulled him towards the door flap. They got out just in time to see Carter and Teal'c disappear into a thick bush.

The huge dinosaur stood right in front of them, its roaring so loud that it was impossible to think, let alone speak. Daniel had frozen on his tracks, eyes wide with fear and disbelief.

Jack shot a round at the dino, just in case. It only seemed to annoy the thing. The dino lunged towards them. Right. They'd not be able to kill it before it ate them. So, plan B.

"Daniel, run!"

Jack's words were lost in yet another deafening growl, but Daniel seemed to have caught the meaning. He turned his back to the dino and ran. Jack followed right on his heels.

Some plan this was, really. Just run. It did feel like the natural thing to do, in this situation, anyway. The best choice there was when facing a bullet-proof enemy about ten times as big as you.

Since it was that big, it had to be stupid. Dinosaurs were supposed to be stupid, just in general. They could probably lose it in the jungle. And it might not be all that fast either, since it wouldn't fit through all the thickly growing trees and bushes.

So, they ran, without thinking, without any clear direction, the continuously pouring rain obscuring their sight, mud sloshing at their feet, Daniel first, Jack following close behind.

After a quarter of an hour or so, Daniel started to slow down, and finally stopped to lean on a tree trunk.

"Did we lose it?" he asked breathlessly.

"Hope so..."

They waited silently, listening for any signs of the beast - and there it was again. A shiver running through the ground, like a tiny earthquake. The footfalls of the dino closing in on them. And another growl. They hadn't lost it, not yet.

"There's our answer. Keep going."

Daniel nodded. He looked pretty tired. Just the way Jack felt. They'd already marched a good distance today. They should've been asleep by now, gathering strength for the last stretch tomorrow, the walk to the ruins. They really hadn't got much choice, though. They ran on.

Jack found himself considering their options. What would they do when they got rid of the dino? They'd certainly get rid of it, sooner or later. When they'd get too tired to run, they could always search a nice little hole to hide in, too small for that stupid big lizard to find. 

They were already lost in the jungle, pretty hopelessly too, but at least they had their radios. The folks at the SGC would probably be able to locate them. Their next communication was due early in the morning. Surely Jack and Daniel could hang on until then. On the other hand, maybe it wasn't such a bad thing Daniel had wasted a moment fighting with his pack. At least they had something. A bit of food, water and medical supplies. Just in case.

Daniel stumbled on a thick root and fell to the muddy ground with a splash. Jack helped him on his feet again.

"You all right?"

"Yeah... Just... Give me a moment."

He didn't look as if he'd hurt himself, but didn't look like he was up to running on right away, either. Maybe they could do with another break. Jack stared at his watch, and could hardly believe what it showed. Half an hour had passed since their first stop. It'd felt like half a day.

Thump. The ground shook again. And again, followed by that sound of twigs and even small trees snapping as something huge fought its way through them. The dino was still right on their tail. Not the least bit farther away.

Either the dino was smarter than Jack had thought, or then it could smell them, or hear them, or both. But just how long would it keep up this chase, anyway? Jack didn't know a whole lot about animals, and even less about extinct prehistorical creatures. Still, this was weird. Why would it keep on chasing something as small and difficult to catch as the two of them? Unless... It was like a cat, toying with its prey, and they were acting just like it wanted them to, providing it with more entertainment.

The dino roared again. Way too near.

"Let's go," Daniel said softly. Jack nodded.

Jack took the lead, now. They weren't really running anymore, just wading on wearily. Knee-deep in mud. And every now and then, they heard another roar from behind, or at times, from their side. As if the dino was guiding them, driving them somewhere. They were playing by its rules.

"This is it," Jack announced, stopping on his tracks. "Doesn't look like we're going to get rid of it anytime soon. Let's start looking for a hiding place. You know, a hollow tree trunk or a cave or something. Anything. Move on, but keep looking."

Finding a suitable hideout proved to be a lot more difficult than Jack had imagined. It was so dark already that they could hardly tell a tree from a bush, let alone find a hole to hide in.

After they'd pushed their way through an area of particularly thick plant growth, Jack noticed there weren't all that many trees around them anymore. They'd emerged out in the open, in a clearing in the jungle. Not good.

"Fall back-" he began, but it was already too late.

With another of those ear-splitting roars, the dino leaped out from the trees on their right, and jumped towards them.

What happened then was - Jack's mind had some real trouble processing what he saw.

The huge lizard had picked up Daniel, just like that, and shook him, and tossed him away - Daniel was flying across the air in a completely absurd arc - until he hit something, another dark patch in the darkness - and fell down to the ground, a small, unmoving figure, a vague gray shape against a black background.

The dino closed in on Daniel and nudged him with its snout. He wasn't moving. Was he dead? No, he couldn't be. No way. The dino would so pay for this. 

Jack dug his boots into the mud and raised his gun. "Come on, you stinking sonuvabitch of a lizard! Do your worst!" he shouted at it.

It turned its huge, ugly face away from Daniel, and stepped towards Jack.

This was stupid. Really, really stupid. Every cell in Jack's body told him to run, to flee for his life. But he had run enough already.

The dino moved really fast for such a huge thing. Jack was afraid he wouldn't be fast enough.

It was right in front of him, bowed its head in a quick sweep, trying to pick him up like it'd already done to Daniel. But Jack was ready. He fired. Right into its open mouth. It backed away, closed its mouth. Its head was still near enough. Jack aimed at its eyes instead. Its nose. Anything that might be vulnerable. There had to be something. Some way to hurt the damn beast. To kill it.

The dino stood up straight and roared at him, but he didn't care. Roar all you will, he thought, and kept shooting, just at random, round after round.

There it came again, lunging towards him. Once its head got nearer, lower, Jack saw he'd hit it in the eye. Better than nothing. He'd get the other eye, too.

He concentrated so hard on shooting that he didn't realize what was going on. The dino wasn't trying to pick him up. It was falling down, crashing towards the ground. Losing consciousness. Maybe even dying. 

Jack tried to back away, but now, he really wasn't fast enough. Tons of stinking dinosaur flesh fell on him, knocking him off balance. Pain blazed through his feet, and he felt something snap in his left leg.

He landed flat on his back, his head hit the ground, and the lights went off.

  


* * *

  


Someone was cursing. Loudly.

Daniel figured he might be doing it himself. He definitely felt bad enough to warrant some really colorful language. The voice turned into a groan. He had every reason to groan, too.

His entire right side felt like one huge bruise, all the way down from his shoulder to his thigh. And he was lying on it, which didn't help at all. Breathing deep made it feel even worse. Moving would probably be a bad idea. He still had his pack on, and it, and his back, rested against something. His face lay on something wet. That wasn't really surprising, since he felt pretty much soaked all over.

He decided to risk opening his eyes. Or at least an eye. Just his left eye, because his right eye was awfully close to the wet something, which he took for mud. He had apparently lost his glasses, too. 

He peered at his surroundings. Lime-green. Everything was lime-green, except for the ground, which was covered with different greens, and some dark brown mud. Pale green light, the first rays of the sun in the rainforest. It wasn't raining anymore. So, he'd been out all night - because-

He couldn't put together what had happened. He and Jack had been running, fleeing from a dinosaur, a really big and angry one. Probably a Tyrannosaur or some such. They'd come out at an opening, and the dino had been there, and it had caught him. It had probably lifted him by his pack, since it hadn't hurt at all. Good thing he'd taken his pack. So, the T-Rex hadn't eaten him. It'd just thrown him away.

There was that voice again. Swearing. "Oh, goddammit!" 

It was Jack's voice, of course. Jack was alive, but he was probably hurt, considering the way he sounded. Daniel couldn't see him. All he saw was the edge of the forest, trees, leaves, lime-green light and mud.

"Jack?"

"Daniel! Daniel, you're... I thought you were... Are you all right?"

"Still in one piece, I think. You?"

"Yeah, me too. It's just that the damn dino decided to die on me. ON me, literally. Can you move?"

"Uh..."

Moving would definitely not feel good, but he'd have to try it sooner or later. He couldn't just stay here in the mud all day long. He decided to start with hands. His left hand felt perfectly all right, so he put his palm against the muddy ground and pushed himself up, to sit with his back against whatever that hard thing behind him happened to be.

Ow, ow, ow. Yeah, his right side was a mess. His right arm wasn't that bad, though. Nothing broken, as far as he could feel, just beaten and bruised. As for the rest, he probably had a broken rib, or two. Or three. Couldn't be sure.

All in all, he'd gotten away pretty easily. Survived an encounter with one of the most famous beasts known to mankind with just a few... all right, with a good few bruises, and some broken ribs. Not that it made it feel any better, though.

He checked his watch. 6 AM. Too early. Hours away from the next communication from the SGC. They couldn't contact the SGC on their own, either - unless they had run towards the gate last night, they were at least a day's march away from it.

"Daniel, you still there? Can't see you from over here..."

"Sorry, Jack. Still here, and I can move, too."

Daniel looked around. They were in a large opening in the forest. Not too far from him lay a huge, unmoving, scale-covered thing. The T-Rex. It was dead. But he couldn't see Jack.

His feet felt all right, so he stood up. Jack had said the dino had died on him. So, he had to be near it. Under it.

Daniel started walking, very slowly, since every step brought up new aches in his bruised side. He made his way around the huge corpse and found Jack. He was lying on the ground. What Daniel could see of him seemed to be uninjured. The rest, everything below his thighs, was lost underneath the dead Tyrannosaur.

"Heyo," Jack smirked at him. "Good news, I killed the dino, and we're both alive. Bad news, we're lost, and I've got several tons of dead dino meat on my feet."

"So, we get the dead dino off your feet. Just that I really don't know how to do that," Daniel wondered aloud. What could he do to move that thing? There was no way he could just lift it with his bare hands...

He had a zat. Maybe he could zat the dinosaur away. It was already dead. Usually, one shot hurt the target, the second one killed it, and the third disintegrated it altogether. Now, what would happen if he shot at a dead dino? Did it matter that it was easily ten times as big as any humanoid target? And would it hurt Jack as well, since Jack couldn't help touching the creature?

Daniel pulled his zat and pointed it at the dino, raising his eyebrows at Jack.

Jack nodded. "Give it a try, I'm ready."

"Please work, please..." Daniel muttered under his breath, and fired.

The blue bolt hit the huge corpse, spread on in blue lighting flashes, enveloped the whole thing, spread on to Jack - but it worked!

The whole huge dead Tyrannosaur vanished into thin air, leaving just a suffering Jack. He groaned aloud once again. Then he fell silent and still, just lying there with his eyes closed. Scared that something had went badly wrong, Daniel crouched closer to check him, but he spoke up soon enough. He kept his eyes closed, though.

"Thanks," he said hoarsely.

"Sorry."

"'Sokay. Really. Now, where are we?"

"Well, there's this rainforest, and these trees, and this opening, and-" 

Daniel's gaze landed on the hard something he had been resting against. It was a wall, with a multitude of reliefs carved on it. It seemed to go on into both directions, disappearing into the jungle beyond the clearing. And there was a dark patch in it near to the tree line. A doorway.

"-and ruins! Jack, we're at the ruins!"

"Yeah! Great! Safety and shelter, a nice hole to hide in, in case other big mean things decide to come for us before we get our call from the SGC. And some nice old writing and rocks for you, so you've got something to do while we wait."

"So, can you walk?"

"Well. I've got some doubts. I think that fat lizard broke my leg."

"It's not far. I'll get you there."

He did, though it wasn't easy. Jack couldn't land any weight on his right leg, so he had to lean heavily on Daniel, which of course doubled the agony in his bruised side. But they made it to the doorway and through it, into a huge stone hall.

They'd just sat down to rest for a while, when their radios crackled. It was way too early for the SGC, so it had to be-

"Carter here... Colonel, Daniel... Do you copy?"

"Carter! O'Neill here. Daniel's with me. We're all right, mostly. Found the ruins."

"We've found the ruins too, sir! We spent the night inside them. Teal'c's here as well, and we're both fine."

"We only walked in two minutes ago. So, just stay where you are, Carter. We'll find you soon enough."

  


* * *

  


Teal'c had only spent a small part of his life with the Tau'ri, but he had already learned to know the other members of SG-1 quite well. He had heard the strain in Colonel O'Neill's voice, and could guess that when the Colonel said they were "mostly all right", it meant something else completely.

"Captain Carter. I believe we should attempt to find Colonel O'Neill and Daniel Jackson as soon as is possible."

She nodded. "I didn't like the way that sounded, either. So... If they just came in, why aren't they here?"

They had both turned to look at the other end of the hall, where they had entered the ruins. There was no sign of the two other members of their team.

There was no sign of the door, either. Although morning light shone in through a long row of narrow windows high up in the wall, there was no light to be seen where the door should have been. The lower part of the wall looked dark everywhere in the hall.

Teal'c leaped up and began walking towards the doorway. Captain Carter followed, and soon took up jogging, and then running. By the time they reached the spot where the door had been, it was clear that their way out was hopelessly shut.

The edges of the former doorway were still clearly discernible from the stone wall, but where the opening had been, there was only smooth stone. Teal'c pressed his shoulder against it and pushed with all his might, but it wouldn't budge.

He moved back, aimed his staff weapon at the stone and shot, despite Captain Carter's alarmed exclamation of "Teal'c, wait!"

The stone was too thick. The staff blast left little more than a darker spot on it.

"Whoever sealed the door did it very quietly. I did not notice anything out of the ordinary during the night," he told her.

"Maybe it wasn't anyone in particular. It could've been some age-old security technology. I mean, look at all the plant growth in here. It looks like this place's been abandoned a long time ago."

"Perhaps so. Nevertheless, it is clear that Colonel O'Neill and Daniel Jackson are not in this hall. If we are indeed within the same ruins, then we must venture deeper inside to search for them."

"That's what we'll do. I can't see any signs of anything that could help me to get the door open here. No access panels or such. But look at the wall across from us - there are two doorways there, and they're both still open."

Teal'c had noticed them too, as soon as there had been enough light in the hall to reveal the whole extent of it. The hall was square-shaped, and on the wall across from the door out stood two identical doorways, probably leading deeper into the ruins.

  


* * *

  


Sam flicked on her radio. "Colonel? We're clearly not in the same part of the building than you. We're caught inside. The door's been sealed behind us."

"Carter, this really isn't a good time-" O'Neill started, and stopped abruptly, his voice fading into a groan. "Daniel, can't you-" he barked, before he apparently realized to let go of the transmit-button, and the sound was cut off.

"All right... I wonder what that was about," Sam muttered to Teal'c, who merely cocked an eyebrow.

A moment later, O'Neill's voice came through the radio again. "Sorry, Carter. Bad timing. So you said you're - what, caught inside?"

"The doorway's blocked. We'll have to look for another exit."

"Damn - so, we're not as near to you as we first thought. Well. Just go ahead, and keep me informed."

"We will. But sir... If I may ask - what's going on in there?"

"Well, we had a rough night. The dino got us. Then, we got it. I broke a leg, and Daniel's trying to help, which isn't... Well, you know how it is. Never mind. We'll hang on. At least our door's still open."

"If we're in the same ruins, we'll find you sooner or later. Until then... Take care, sir, Daniel."

"You too. O'Neill out."

"It appears their escape was not as successful as ours."

"Yeah, it clearly wasn't, so we'd better find them fast. Which door should we pick? Left first?"

"Whichever, Captain Carter."

They walked across the hall, noting once again how big it was. There was enough space for a bunch of dinosaurs. The doors were large enough that a dino could fit through them, as well. If the Tyrannosaur had followed them to the ruins, it might've come in. But they had managed to lose it, and it had followed O'Neill and Daniel instead. Luckily, it sounded like they'd survived its attack without any immediately life-threatening injuries.

When they reached the doorway, Sam spent a while examining it and the surrounding walls. No sign of any technology here, either, no way to access anything that might open or close the door. They'd just have to take the risk and hope that they'd not get shut in again.

Sam lead the way through the doorway, into another large hall. It was pretty much the same as the previous one, with stone walls, narrow windows high up, and plants growing on the ground. There were some carvings on the walls, though, which had been missing from the first hall. And the far end of the room was very different.

She walked ahead to get a better look. At the far end of the room lay a flight of massive stairs, ascending to another level of the ruins, pretty high up, since the rooms were so high.

"I do not think we should proceed to another floor."

"Me neither, Teal'c. Let's go check that other doorway."

The way back to the first hall was still open, so they retraced their steps, and walked through the right-hand doorway instead. It opened into a hall that seemed identical to the left-hand one, except for one big difference. There were no stairs in this hall, and no exits either, except for the doorway they'd just come through. It was a dead end. They'd have to try the stairs. They had nowhere else to go.

  


* * *

  


"O'Neill out," Jack finished the short radio conversation with Carter.

"All right, it's all done. I hope it'll hold," Daniel told him, pulling down his cut pant leg to cover the makeshift splint. "I think Sam could do a better one."

"Probably, but looks like we might not meet her and Teal'c in a while, so this'll have to do."

It'd taken Daniel quite a while to tend to Jack's leg, and Jack had hated pretty much every minute of it. First of all, he hated being the one who needed to be tended to. It had also hurt more than he'd expected. He considered himself quite used to broken bones, but it didn't make the pain any easier to endure. At least it looked like a nice, single, closed fracture, just one very painful swollen section in his leg. The skin was intact, nothing sticking through it. Could've been a lot worse.

By the look and feel of it, he had sprained his ankle as well. He and Daniel agreed that it probably wasn't broken. Now, with a splint on the broken part of his leg and a taped ankle, walking should be a bit easier.

Daniel sat down next to him, his back against the wall. Jack heard him take a deep breath, which suddenly turned into a gasp of pain.

Jack had no idea of the extent of Daniel's injuries. He'd seemed relatively unharmed, walking and using both his hands and speaking normally. Still, it was clear he wasn't perfectly all right. Of course he wasn't. The Tyrannosaur had tossed him against the wall and he'd fallen all the way down, of course he was hurt, and Jack would need to know how badly.

Daniel's pack rested on the ground next to Jack, and it sported an impressive row of teeth marks. He was really glad Daniel had taken his pack, because without it, those holes would've been in his sides instead.

"All right, Daniel, it's your turn now. Or mine, however you put it. You got to prod my leg, and I intend to return the favor."

"Jack... You don't need to, it's not that bad. I'll last till we get back."

"Daniel, come on. It might take a while before we get anywhere. We're over a day's walk away from the gate. Just give me a clue here, will ya? Where does it hurt?"

"Umm, well, I think I might've cracked a rib or two when I fell."

"Let's take a look, shall we?"

Looking very reluctant, moving slowly, as if it hurt quite a bit, Daniel squirmed his way out of his mud-covered jacket. He peeled up his damp T-shirt to reveal an extensive pattern of reds and blues on his right side. It seemed to continue even further both upwards and down.

"Your hand's all right? And shoulder? Everything moving like it should?"

"Yeah, everything moves, though it doesn't feel all that nice. It'll be fine. It's a miracle, really, that I didn't dislocate my shoulder, I kind of landed on it, after all."

"So, about those ribs..." 

Jack hated doing this, but he had only one way to find out, so he went on, running his fingers over the bruises and pressing gently to locate the fractures. Daniel was clearly doing his best to appear indifferent, but without much success - he kept flinching involuntarily, groaning and gasping. Of course, Jack had been pretty much the same when Daniel had worked on his leg.

"All right, I'm counting two broken ones. I'm going to tape them, it's going to hurt, but it'll help the pain. So, the ribs are the worst? Anything else I should know about?"

Daniel shook his head, looking a bit pale in the scant light pouring in through the narrow windows. Jack eyed his exposed chest carefully. As far as he could see, it was moving evenly enough. His breathing seemed strained, but that was understandable. Broken ribs weren't a new thing to Jack, and he knew how bad they felt. The most important thing was, he didn't see anything really worrisome, anything that'd suggest serious internal injuries. Not that he wanted to underestimate their current trouble, but they could've been a lot worse off.

  


* * *

  


"You know, this would've been a lot easier if you hadn't spent so much tape on my ankle," Jack noted.

Daniel really wouldn't have minded if Jack could've been a bit faster. Having someone poke at the huge bruise that was his right side was torment, despite the painkillers that'd come with the first aid kit in his pack. Nevertheless, he answered, "You'll need to be able to walk."

"Well, the same goes for you. Might even be that I need your help walking. So, you need all the help you can get, too. Which isn't a lot. But there. That's it," Jack smoothed the last bit of tape, and drew his hands away.

Daniel pulled down his shirt and tried taking a deep breath. It threatened to turn into a cough, but he grimaced and stifled it. It definitely didn't feel a lot better than before. He decided not to tell that to Jack, though the look on his face had probably revealed it already.

"One more thing, Daniel. Lesson 101 on broken ribs. The most important thing is to keep breathing. Deep breaths. And coughing is good, too. Even though it hurts. I know it does. I've been there as well."

"Why?"

"Because. That's what the docs tell you. It's got something to do with avoiding collapsed lungs and pneumonia, I think."

"Well, that's convincing."

"I don't need to be a doctor to figure out that breathing's good and not breathing's very bad, so there. Now. If we're all set..."

The radio interrupted Jack's words. It was Sam, once again, and her news weren't any better than the last time.

"As far as we can see, we've only got one way to go, and that's upstairs," she told them.

Jack frowned. "Right. And we've no idea of how big this place is. We should get our call from the SGC in fifteen minutes. Just stay where you are. Don't go anywhere. We'll check out our ruins to see if we've got any stairs here."

"Will do, sir."

Daniel closed his eyes, leaned his head back, bit his teeth together and breathed in deeply, like Jack had told him to do. It was bad. But he'd have to take even worse. They'd have to start walking around. He wasn't looking forward to getting up, but he was eager to see more of this place, whatever it was. So far, he hadn't seen anything that'd give a hint about who had built it, when and why.

Still leaning on the wall, he stood up. Jack followed, eyeing the ground as if looking for something. After a while, he shook his head.

"If I could just find a stick big enough to help me walk... But I can't see any," he explained, and took a step, testing his injured leg. From the way it looked, he still couldn't put much weight on it. Daniel stepped to his side and offered his help.

"I guess I don't have much choice," Jack muttered, and nodded.

In addition to the door out, there were two doorways in the hall, both in the wall across from them. They made their way to them slowly. The place was so big. Way too big. It was one of the largest halls Daniel had ever seen in any ruins, and that was saying a lot, since Daniel had seen quite a bunch of ruins during his life. Finally, they reached the left-hand doorway and walked through it, both of them grimacing and panting from the pain and the effort.

The doorway led to a hall significantly smaller than the first one. There were no stairs there, and no doorways, either. Nothing that'd lead them any closer to Sam and Teal'c. 

The long-awaited call from the SGC came just when they'd sat down to rest, and Jack was quick to answer it.

"SGC, O'Neill here. We're in a bit of a situation."

"What kind of a situation, Colonel?" General Hammond's familiar voice asked.

"Long story, sir. About a day's walk away from the gate, a dinosaur attacked us, and we were forced to flee. Carter and Teal'c are stuck in some ruins, Daniel and I are injured, and inside some ruins as well, though they might be different ones."

"Colonel, could you repeat that? Did you say 'dinosaur'?"

"Yes, sir. Big scary lizard. Very much not extinct."

"Did I get this right - Captain Carter and Teal'c are trapped, you and Doctor Jackson are not?"

"That's the case, sir. Unless Carter has some news - Carter, you listening?"

"Yes, sir," Sam joined the conversation. "We're still waiting for orders."

Daniel was resting his head against the wall, concentrating on deep breaths. When Sam started talking, he thought he heard something. Her voice sounded different from Hammond's. As if it came from more than one source. He wondered if he was just imagining it.

"And you mentioned injuries? How bad?"

"Well, nothing critical, neither of us is about to die, but it's bad enough to limit our mobility. Bruises and broken bones. We could use some medical attention. I think we'd better get out of this dino-land and back home as soon as possible."

"What would you recommend, then, Colonel? Do you need backup?"

"Possibly. We've just started checking the ruins we're in. It's still possible we're in the same ruins and we'll find our way to Carter and Teal'c, so we can get out together and walk back to the gate. Give us half an hour and call us again, and we'll probably know more."

"Very well, Colonel. Half an hour it is. SGC out."

Daniel had been listening very closely ever since he'd heard Sam speak. He thought he'd caught something else, heard Teal'c's voice, and Sam's, though they hadn't joined the radio conversation again.

"Sam, Teal'c," he called into his radio. "Are you near to a wall? Could you say something near it, as loud as possible?"

"Daniel? Yes, we're next to a wall... Why?"

"Because I thought I heard you speak earlier. Just checking if I was imagining things. Don't talk to the radio. Turn it off. Just shout something."

"All right..."

Jack was gazing at Daniel as if he was nuts. He shrugged. They waited and listened.

They both started when they heard a voice, Sam's voice, calling "Hello." It was faint, but clear enough. It came from behind the wall they were leaning on.

Daniel turned to face the wall and shouted, "Sam! Teal'c! Can you hear me?"

He heard Teal'c's deep voice answer, but since it was so low, it came through a lot less clear than Sam's. Nevertheless, Daniel was was pretty sure he'd said "I hear you, Daniel Jackson."

"We're in the same ruins, all right," Jack noted.

"Too near, and still too far." Daniel knocked on the wall. It was solid stone. Definitely too thick for them to make a hole in it. Still, this was good news. At least they weren't miles apart from each other. And if they were in the same ruins, there would probably be a way from their side to the other.

"Carter," Jack took up the radio again, so they could hear clearly without shouting. "We need to check another doorway. Just in case. You just stick to this wall, and we'll contact you later."

Daniel got up reluctantly, and they began their slow and painful walk towards the other doorway.

They found a third hall, smaller than the first one, but clearly longer than the second one. There was something odd about the far end of this hall. Definitely no stairs leading up. Instead, the low growth of bushes ended abruptly at one point, and the floor seemed to disappear.

"Not good," Daniel uttered.

"Definitely not good."

They had to know for sure, so they walked on some more. When they were finally near enough, they slumped to the ground to rest again, and to curse their lack of luck. Instead of stairs leading up, they'd found steep stairs leading down, into shadowy, uninviting depths. Even though they were in the same ruins with Sam and Teal'c, it didn't look as if they could find a way to them.

"Damn," Jack cursed.

"Yeah," Daniel answered breathlessly. He was having a hard time trying to catch his breath, despite of Jack's not so useful advice on the importance of breathing. He didn't know how much more walking he'd be able to take.

Jack gave him a worried look. "I think we'd better get back to that other hall, near to Teal'c and Carter, but... Hey, look at that. There's something for you."

Jack was pointing at the wall. It was interesting enough to take Daniel's mind off his side, and before he noticed it, he was breathing evenly again, if not all that deeply.

The wall was covered with carvings, and symbols that looked like writing of some sort. Daniel couldn't recognize it. The signs reminded him of cuneiform, except that they were made of narrow slashes instead of wedge-shapes. As if they'd been drawn with a blade. Or a claw, considering that the accompanying images mostly depicted different dinosaurs.

"What do you make of it?"

"Umm... Not much, but then again... Wow. This is a really wild guess, but I think it looks as if there might be, or might've been, an advanced culture of dinosaurs here. I mean, look at the writing - the way it's made - and the lack of any other creatures in the pictures... But that's just looking at this one scene in this one room, there might be a lot more out there."

"There were some in that other hall too. Didn't you notice?"

Daniel frowned. No, he hadn't noticed. He hadn't been paying attention to the walls. That, if something, was a sure sign of how bad he felt. "Not really. No."

"We should be getting back there anyway. You up to it?"

"Let's go."

Luckily, this was likely to be the last stretch of walking they'd need to do in a while. Jack had clearly noticed the way Daniel felt, since he tried to put more weight on his injured foot. As a result, they were even slower than before.

They got out of the room with the stairs only to find themselves surrounded.

Gathered in a semi-circle around the doorway stood a pack of small dinosaurs. Even the largest of them was about tall enough to reach Daniel's chin. But they had mean-looking claws, and they hissed and growled, revealing rows of sharp teeth. Definitely meat-eaters, and apparently angry.

Jack had drawn a pistol, and pointed it at them. Daniel wondered why he didn't take a bigger gun indeed, but he must have spent all his ammo on the Tyrannosaur.

Before Daniel got his zat armed, the dinosaurs started advancing, closing their circle around the doorway, leaving Jack and Daniel nowhere else to go. They had two options - to shoot or to flee. They'd fled the Tyrannosaur, but these were a lot smaller.

Jack had apparently made the decision. He shot at the nearest beast. Daniel did the same, but the dinosaur he'd targeted was so fast it was able to dodge. They'd only managed to make the creatures more angry. The dinosaurs moved even closer, snapping their jaws. Daniel couldn't understand why they didn't attack, happy as he was about it.

"Let's retreat. Nice and slow," Jack said in a low tone.

As if walking hadn't been hard enough to begin with, now they had to move backwards, slowly, guns pointed ahead, mad dinosaurs growling at them. Daniel was sure that without the extremely threatening situation and all the adrenalin coursing through his veins, he'd be lying on the floor, too tired and sore to move at all.

They got back through the doorway, into the room with the stairs, and the dinosaurs followed them. They regrouped in a semi-circle as soon as they were in the room, moving as if it was all pre-planned and organized.

"The big one. In the middle. I think it's the leader," Daniel whispered. Jack nodded.

They stopped for a while. If they'd keep going backwards, they'd end up at the stairs. But the dinosaurs wouldn't let them stop. As soon as they did, the creatures started growling louder, moving around, lunging towards the two of them and drawing back again. Urging them to move on.

"We can't go down there," Jack noted. "We've got to shoot our way out. Start with the big one."

Daniel bit his lip, but nodded, and pointed his zat.

"Now!" Jack yelled.

They fired almost simultaneously - but faster than the bullet and the bolt, another dinosaur leaped ahead to take the hits. Jack fired again, and Daniel followed his lead, but the same thing happened again, they missed the target, and even the self-sacrificing one that took the damage didn't seem badly hurt. The big one howled something that sounded like an order, and the whole pack started moving on again, slowly but inevitably, getting closer than ever before.

Jack and Daniel started backing away as fast as they could. One of the dinosaurs leaped away from their line, slashing at them with a sharp-clawed foot. It just missed Jack's shoulder. Another dinosaur launched a teasing attack, lashing forward with a hand that almost hit Daniel's knee.

They were at the stairs a lot sooner than Daniel had expected. He stepped backwards, and all of a sudden, there was no floor beneath his foot. He would've fallen down if not for Jack's help. Jack had been more wary, and steadied him.

They had no choice. They started retreating down the stairs. For a moment, it looked like the dinosaurs might have given up on them. Then, one of the beasts leaped down the stairs, landing right in front of them. It growled at them, pushing its open jaws awfully close to Jack's leg.

Jack jerked back - it was the instinctive thing to do, of course. Unfortunately, he lost his balance because of it. He grabbed Daniel's sleeve, but Daniel wasn't exactly the steadiest support he could've found. This time, they both stumbled and fell back.

The last Daniel saw of the dinosaurs was a quick flash before he hit the stairs. The biggest one of the beasts waved a hand over the stairway. It looked like it was wearing a hand device. Its eyes glowed.

Then, there was nothing but chaos, pain and hard stone, as they crashed down towards the darkness.

  


* * *

  


Teal'c checked the time. Twenty minutes had passed since their last communication with the SGC and the other two members of their team, and they hadn't heard from them again. He would have expected Colonel O'Neill to contact them as soon as he had something to tell, and he was surprised that it was taking this long. However, the ruins were truly great in size. Perhaps it took them this much time simply to visit every room they could find.

There was not much for Teal'c and Captain Carter to do. They were still sitting in the room with the wall that separated them from the others. Teal'c had decided that shooting at it would do no good, as it had not helped with the outer door, which was made of the same type of stone.

The room was empty but for the two of them, the plants reaching up from the ground, and the carvings on the wall. It was darker than the other two rooms - Teal'c guessed that the sunlight from the outside did not have direct passage into this room, and the light that did come was from the surrounding rooms instead.

He had spent most of the twenty minutes gazing at the carved walls. They were intriguing, and he was certain Daniel Jackson would have found them extremely interesting. Of course, it was likely that there were such carvings in the other part of this building as well, and that Daniel had already seen them.

The writing was unlike anything Teal'c had ever seen, but the pictures had a disturbingly familiar feel about them. They reminded him of many scenes he had seen in different Goa'uld temples. The style and the situations depicted were similar, although all the characters seemed to be dinosaurs.

There was a throne scene of some sort, where a small Theropod dinosaur, possibly a Velociraptor or a Troodon, stood on a pedestal, high up on the wall. In front of it were gathered rows of similar beasts, some significantly larger than it, possibly Tyrannosaurs, and some smaller ones, which might have been young ones. Under them, reaching all the way down to the floor, were dozens of other dinosaurs, most of them plant-eaters. The interpretation was clear: there was a lord who ruled all, then, some close to him, similar to him, possibly his offspring and his Jaffa, and then, underneath them, the common people, their slaves, their prey.

Teal'c had heard many age-old Jaffa legends that spoke of that time long, long ago, when the Goa'uld had not yet found humans and begun to use only them as hosts. SG-1 had already learned that one story was true, that of the Unas, the monster-like creatures that had been the very first hosts. 

Here, Teal'c was beginning to believe they were at the root of another such story. It spoke of reptilian creatures that some ancient Goa'uld lord had found. There had been many different beasts of this type, out of which the Goa'uld had wished to choose the very best. In the end, he had chosen the most intelligent one, a small, agile beast, and taken his body. Then, of course, he had lived, flourished and ruled successfully until the end of time, as all Goa'uld lords did in such stories. When exactly this had happened, Teal'c did not know, and no story told what had come of the reptilian-hosted Goa'ulds, if they had actually existed.

Teal'c had already spoken of his interpretation of the wall with Captain Carter, and she had found it both plausible and very interesting. Still, it did not explain how the dinosaurs had originally come here. Teal'c did not even expect to learn that fact, since even the Goa'uld had apparently never found out. They had probably first met dinosaurs on this world instead of Earth. Old as the story might be, Teal'c didn't believe that it could be 65 million years old, or that any Goa'uld would have been around that long ago.

"All right, we can expect the SGC to call us anytime now... I wonder why the Colonel hasn't contacted us again," Captain Carter spoke up.

"I have been wondering that as well. Perhaps something unexpected has come up."

"I just hope they're doing all right."

"As do I."

  


* * *

  


"SG-1, do you copy?" the call came right on time, but the answer didn't.

"SG-1, this is the SGC, do you copy?"

Sam waited for Colonel O'Neill to respond, but he never did. Not one word from the others. She didn't like it. 

"SGC to SG-1, please respond."

Finally, Sam replied herself.

"SGC, Carter here. We haven't heard from the others since your last call. Colonel, sir, do you copy? Sir? Daniel?"

Still, no answer. Nothing at all.

"What's happened to them?" Sam whispered, not to the radio, but to herself and Teal'c.

"Captain Carter? What is your status?"

"Nothing new here, sir, we still haven't moved from our place. I'm starting to think that we should, though. If something's happened to them..."

"General Hammond?" Teal'c joined the conversation. "The last time we spoke to you, we found out that we are indeed in the same ruins with Colonel O'Neill and Daniel Jackson, separated by a thick wall. Still, it is my belief that there must be a connection between our side of the ruins and theirs."

"This is good news," Hammond replied. "You have checked your surroundings carefully?"

"We have, and all we've found are those stairs leading up. We're out of options here. With your permission, sir, I'd like to see what's up there."

"Permission granted, Captain. Do whatever you can to find the rest of your team and to make sure that they're all right. We'll contact you again in one hour. Hopefully you will not fail to answer."

"We'll try not to, sir. Carter out."

Sam and Teal'c went back to the big hall, noted that the door out was still every bit as closed as before, and returned to the room with the stairs.

She glanced at him, and he nodded. Without any words, they began climbing the stairs. It was surprisingly hard work, since the stairs were so big, just like everything else here. They made their way up quickly nevertheless, driven by the the constant worry that Jack and Daniel might be in serious trouble in some other part of the ruins.

  


* * *

  


Jack hit the ground a lot earlier than he'd dared to hope.

For a while, all he could do was rest on the cold floor. He felt like he'd been caught in an avalanche. Bright spots were dancing in front of his eyes. His leg was abominable, and he'd hit his head on the way down. It was already starting to ache.

Slowly, he began to take in the surroundings. The floor felt like stone, no muddy soil on it, and definitely no plants. It was also completely dark, unless he'd taken far worse a blow than he thought he had and lost his sight. No, he didn't think that'd happened.

He fumbled for his flashlight, found it and turned it on. The startlingly bright light felt like a nail to the head, and he flicked it off quickly. It'd been on for long enough that he'd been able to spot Daniel, who was lying on his back some feet away from him.

As Jack crawled towards his friend, he picked up a really distressing sound. Daniel was gasping like a fish out of water. Jack wondered if he was even conscious.

"Daniel?"

The troubled answer came between gasps, "Ja-hhck?"

"I'm right here," Jack told him, groping ahead blindly, until his hand hit Daniel's head. He stroked his damp hair. "Right here. Take it easy."

Jack maneuvered his way closer, so that he could lift Daniel from the floor, to rest against his chest in a half-seated position. Hopefully it'd help his breathing a bit. Jack could feel how he was struggling to get air.

"Remember what we talked about deep breaths, Daniel? In - and out. Concentrate - come on. In - and - out-"

Daniel gave no answer, but after a while, Jack felt him relax, and his breathing started to sound a bit more human.

"Sorry."

"Daniel, please. You don't need to apologize for being injured."

"No, I... I landed on my back - knocked the wind out of me - and I couldn't - I just panicked. Stupid."

"That's not stupid, all right? You're doing good."

"Not all right... Jack, that dinosaur - was a Goa'uld."

"What?"

"You didn't see? When we fell - the big one had glowy eyes."

Jack had thought that the dinosaurs seemed smart, and they'd definitely been acting as if they'd had a plan. That large one had clearly been giving orders to the others. Aside from that, he hadn't seen anything Goa'uld-ish about them, though.

"You sure about that?"

"Uh uh."

"Right. We need to tell the others... About all this stuff, anyway," Jack noted, and reached for his radio.

"Carter, Teal'c, do you copy?" he called, but got no answer. They waited, and waited. He tried again, but there was nothing, just static, and then silence.

"Might be us," Daniel suggested. "We're underground. Something might be blocking the signal."

"Now that I think of it, the folks at home should've contacted us by now, too. Damn."

"Jack... Is it - Why's it this dark? Isn't it still day above?"

"It's not just you, if that's what you're wondering. It really is pitch black down here. I'll take a look around. You going to be OK?" Jack asked, as he began moving away from Daniel, easing him to lie on the floor again.

"Still breathing."

"Good. Keep it up."

Jack flicked on the flashlight, this time prepared for the blinding brightness. He shone the light towards where he figured the stairs would be. They were there, too, looking terribly uninviting now that he'd had such a close encounter with them.

He pointed the light upwards. Some daylight should've reached them from the hall above, no matter how deep they were. But the beam of his flashlight never reached that hall. There was something in between, a stone slab blocking the stairway, level with this room's ceiling. They were trapped, down here, in the darkness.

  


* * *

  


Daniel raised his head from the cold floor just enough that he could see where Jack pointed with the flashlight. So, that was what the dino-goa'uld had been up to with the hand device, was his first thought, when he saw the stone blocking the stairs.

His second thought, the dismal fact that they were caught down here, almost made him panic again. They had no idea how huge this lower floor was. There might be miles and miles of catacombs criss-crossing the ground under the jungle. It was dark down here, and cold, despite the tropic above.

He tried to concentrate on deep breaths again, counting each inhalation, but it did nothing to help him fight the anxiety. He had the feeling that breathing was growing slowly but steadily more difficult as time passed. That wasn't supposed to be the case with broken ribs, was it? What if...

"Jack? If I... You know, if I were bleeding internally or something... I would be doing a lot worse already, wouldn't I?"

Jack had crawled back to his side in a second, and shone the flashlight on him. Enough light reached Jack's face to show how startled he looked. He grabbed Daniel's wrist, checking his pulse, and lifted his shirt to take a look at his side again.

"Doesn't look any different to me, and that's a good sign. I don't know the exact time when the dino got you, but it was sometime in the night, so quite a few hours have passed since. I don't think you'd have been able to walk around, let alone support me, if you'd got really serious internal injuries. Don't think you'd be talking to me now. Why do you ask? Feeling worse?"

Daniel didn't want to worry Jack, but he knew that keeping this to himself wouldn't help at all. He nodded.

"Right... Need something for the pain?"

It wasn't as much the pain as the fact that he felt like he wasn't getting enough oxygen in, though he'd gladly take anything that might make him feel even slightly better. But wasn't the first aid kit in his pack, which he had dropped somewhere in the big hall when they'd first arrived there? He'd been so stupid, so completely idiotic, that he'd left it there. That would mean that they had no supplies at all, except for what they had on themselves - little more than sidearms and radios.

"Didn't take my pack."

"You really think I'd have let you leave it behind? I took it. Figured it'd be easier for me to carry it."

Daniel heard Jack rummage the pack, and soon, he handed over a canteen and two pills. Daniel swallowed one, and offered the other to Jack.

"No, no, you take both. We've got enough."

"Okay." 

Daniel took the second pill as well, and gave Jack the canteen, hoping he hadn't just been tricked into taking more than his share. Jack was injured too, and by the look of his leg and the way he'd been squirming when Daniel had splinted it, it was pretty bad. Now, after their tumble down the stairs, it had to be even worse.

"How're you doing, anyway?" he asked Jack.

"Hangin' on."

"Let me check?"

Daniel sat up, accepted the flashlight from Jack, and shone it on the splinted leg. So much for the splint. The stick he'd found upstairs and used to make it had snapped into several pieces. There wasn't much hope of finding another one down here. He took the thing apart and wondered what to do.

"I'm out of ideas here... You think we've got anything at all that'd work as a splint?"

"Can't think of anything."

"So. I'll just take the longest bit that's left, and bind that in place. Maybe it'll help a bit."

"Don't worry about it, Daniel. I'll manage."

"Of course you will."

Of course they'd manage. They had no other choice. The future didn't look too bright, though. They couldn't just sit here, wait and hope someone would fight the dinos and open up the stairs and get them out. They'd have to start walking again, and try and find another way out, if there was one. If there wasn't... But there had to be. Daniel tried to push away any thoughts of Egyptian tombs which only had one way in.

Jack had taken the flashlight again, and shone it around the room. It was smaller than any on the floor above - small enough that the light reached all the walls. They were decorated with carvings here as well. They showed several large plant-eating dinosaurs, which seemed to be walking or running. Daniel told himself they didn't look like anything one might find in a tomb. The light also revealed two doorways, one leading to the left, the other straight ahead.

Daniel pushed himself up from the floor, cradling his injured side. He'd collected a few more bruises on the way down, but it wasn't that much worse. No new fractures. It wasn't even hurting as much now, since the drugs had begun to take effect.

Jack had stood up as well, groaning on the way. The pathetic excuse of a splint clearly wasn't helping him a lot. Without even asking, Daniel put his left hand around Jack's waist, and Jack reached an arm over his shoulders. They'd help each other walk as best they could, but it'd still be anguish to them both.

"All right. Let's go and see the sights. At least I'm pretty sure we're free of dinos down here. And dino'ulds."

"Goa'uldosaurs."

"Right. You're the linguist."

  


* * *

  


The second floor did not appear to be very different from the ground level. There was more light, as the windows were larger and higher up, not as obscured by the thick foliage of the outside jungle. The floor was different, of course, just stone, not covered with plants. The walls were carved with images of numerous different dinosaurs. Surprisingly, many of them were what Teal'c took to be the lower cast, the common, slave-like plant-eaters, not the ruling predators.

The stairs had taken them to a room identical in size to the one below, with the one single exit directly ahead. The next room was much smaller and had smooth walls without any carvings or text. However, it had three doorways including the one they'd come through, a door in each wall but for the one with the windows.

"This doorway should lead us closer to Colonel O'Neill and Daniel Jackson," Teal'c told Captain Carter, indicating the one that opened towards the direction where the two others had been.

"And that's where we're going," Carter replied instantly, so they went on.

The next room took Teal'c by surprise. It was dominated by a large pool full of crystal-clear water. A thin aqueduct, low on the floor, lead away from it, disappearing through a small hole in the opposite wall. At least they would not run out of water, even if they would be trapped in these ruins for a longer time.

Far more promising than the water was the fact that, if Teal'c's estimates were correct, the room continued past the point were the separating wall had been on the lower floor. At its far end was a doorway leading ahead, even further to the other side of the ruins, the side where O'Neill and Daniel were.

They walked ahead, and soon found themselves in another room with a door in each wall, except for the one that had windows. They had traversed the ruins, walked across them, from one outer wall to the other. Now, they only needed to find stairs leading down to reach the others.

"It is good we chose to explore the upper level," he noted, as they walked ahead, hopefully to a part of the ruins that was directly above Daniel and O'Neill.

"We'll just have to be careful not to get lost here," Carter stated. "Because even though the rooms are huge, there's so many of them and so many doorways that this is starting to feel like some kind of a maze."

  


* * *

  


On through another doorway, and then another, straight ahead, following the wall with windows. At one point, Sam and Teal'c met a windowless wall blocking their way, and had to turn to the right, to the inner part of the ruins, away from the outer wall. The next room had a door leading to their previous direction, and they went that way.

Sam was trying her best to keep count of where they had turned and when, but it wasn't easy. There weren't any landmarks about. Most rooms were identical, or almost identical in size - big, though not as big as the halls below. Ever since they'd left the room with the stairs, they'd seen no carvings on the walls. The floor was hard stone, so they left no marks on it, no footprints or broken plants.

She was glad there were two of them here. Two heads would think better than one, and Teal'c not only had a great sense of direction, but also had more experience in scouting and finding his way in unfamiliar surroundings than she did. At the moment, though, they had no need to find their way back to where they'd come from. All they needed was a staircase leading down.

Finally, they reached a room with windows that, unless she was completely mistaken, lay at a right angle with the other windowed walls they'd seen. They'd reached the end of the ruins. One turn to the left confirmed her reckoning: it took them to a corner room, with windows in two walls that met each other.

"We must've crossed pretty much all of the area above them now," she said to Teal'c, feeling more than a bit disappointed.

"I agree, Captain Carter. It is surprising, and unfortunate, that there seems to be no access to the lower floor from here. Still, there are yet many rooms we have not seen, many doorways we ignored on the way."

Sam checked her watch. It was past noon already, a fitting time for a lunch break, but they had nothing to eat. They'd not taken anything with them when they'd fled from the camp. She wasn't really hungry, either. She was way too worried for that. No need to take a break.

"Let's keep looking," she said.

  


* * *

  


The first doorway was pretty close, and Jack and Daniel reached it without too much suffering. Or, at least Jack did. He couldn't be sure how Daniel felt, but he seemed to be doing all right, considering the circumstances.

Jack swept the room with the flashlight. It was probably about the same size as the previous one - estimating was hard when it was so dark. At least the light reached the back wall here as well. There, at the far end of the room, it also reached something more interesting: the light was reflected from the gently rippling surface of a large pool of water. Which was good. On the other hand, Jack didn't spot any doorways at all, and the walls were smooth, without any carvings.

"Okay. We need to check that other doorway too. But at least we've got water," he noted to Daniel, who just nodded, and they started their slow progress away from this room, back to the previous, and then to the next door.

The next room was a lot smaller, and again had a door to the left and straight ahead. None to the right, which had been the outer wall in the upper floor.

"Which way?" Daniel asked.

"What do you think? You've seen more ruins than I."

"Never seen any built by dinosaurs... Anyway, I'd just go straight ahead. At least we won't get lost that way."

"Sounds good to me."

So, they walked straight ahead, through to yet another similar room - it was small compared to the first, had several doorways, and smooth walls. They decided to keep going straight on, and ended up in the third exactly identical room. It'd be really easy to get lost down here.

The one and only good thing was that what had been the outer wall up there seemed to be the outer wall down here as well. At least the tunnels didn't seem to stretch much farther than the ruins on the ground level. The bad things... There were too many to count. Though the first short stretch to the first doorway had felt relatively easy, things went downhill and fast as soon as they left the first room.

Jack would've given anything for a walking stick of any kind, anything that would allow him to walk on his own, without burdening Daniel further. Because, even though he'd done his best to reassure Daniel, he was terribly worried about him. 

Daniel was coughing now, and the sound echoed loudly in the empty stone halls. He was clearly having some trouble breathing, and the strain of walking around obviously didn't do him any good.

Jack tried to put more weight on his injured foot. It just was so damn painful... But not as painful, not nearly as bad, as it would be to have Daniel suffocate because of him.

One step ahead. Another step. Felt like he'd stepped in a bear trap. Jeez. Don't think, just walk. 

One more step... And whatever he told himself, whatever he thought, his leg just wouldn't take it. It gave in, folded under his weight. It took Daniel by surprise, and they both toppled over, landing heavily on the cold stone. The flashlight stayed on, but it slipped from his grasp and rolled on the floor, the light pointing uselessly away from them.

Jack heard Daniel groan in pain, and start coughing again. He reached to take a hold of his shoulder.

"Jeez, I'm sorry, Daniel!"

The coughing fit passed, and after a few rapid breaths, Daniel answered,

"Nah - Sorry - I couldn't catch you."

"Aw, come on, you're doing more than your part already. We'll just rest here for a while, all right?"

"Yeah... Could do with a break."

Jack sat up and picked up the flashlight. "I'm going to turn this off. Save the batteries," he warned in advance, and pressed the button, leaving them in the dark again.

As far as he could remember, Jack had never been afraid of the dark. Still, this was pretty scary. The place was so completely lightless. It might've been that way for a long, long time, too, before they'd fallen in and started waving a flashlight around.

Even the air smelled old down here, now that he thought of it. On the ground floor, there'd been the unmistakable scent of the rainforest, made of the gazillion flowers and other plants out there, maybe with a trace of the stinking lizards. That was missing here. He could just smell... dust. Ancient, ageless dust.

And it was silent. So very silent, no birds, no bugs, no wind. And no dinos - he definitely didn't mind that. Every sound came through awfully loud in here. Every breath. Every cough. Jack didn't want to force Daniel to get up again, but he was afraid that if they'd stop for too long, they'd never get going again. 

He reached to squeeze Daniel's shoulder, just about to tell him that they should get moving, when the most frightening sound he'd ever heard cut the air. He'd heard it before. It was the roar of a huge angry dinosaur, just like the one that'd chased them last night. And it came from behind them.

"Oh God, no," Daniel whispered, gasping awfully fast again.

Jack tried to think, think fast and clear. It could've sounded like the thing was closer than it really was. The sounds echoed in these halls so that it would be impossible to know where, exactly, it had come from, but it was clear it came from some of the rooms directly behind them, the rooms they'd left.

He didn't know if the dino would see in this darkness. He didn't think any animal could see if there was no light at all. Even nocturnal animals needed moonlight or starlight or something, didn't they? But it would definitely smell them. And hear them, if they wouldn't be careful. They were lying at about mid-floor in the room. They couldn't stay here. They'd have to keep moving.

Daniel had figured that out as well, and was struggling to get up. Jack put the flashlight to his belt. Turning it on would reveal them instantly. He had a pretty good idea where the doorways were in this room. They'd head to the one that was opposite from where the dino-sound had come from.

They stood up, supporting each other again, and started limping on. It felt useless - the faster they tried to go, the more unsteady their steps got. Jack had, again, no choice but to lean on Daniel quite heavily. He felt Daniel swaying under his weight. Even worse, he felt the muffled coughs racking his body, and heard them as well, no matter how hard Daniel tried to suppress them. It wouldn't do. If Jack heard it, the dino might hear it too.

Another roar rang in the room. It didn't sound like it was any closer. Thank God for that.

Jack had guessed right, they found the doorway right where he'd thought it was, and walked through it. Without light, they couldn't have any idea of what the next room was like.

Daniel was getting unsteady on his feet, but now that they'd stopped for a moment, Jack could keep his weight on his good foot and actually support Daniel as well. 

And no matter how bad he felt, Daniel clearly wasn't ready to give in yet. "Jack - all the rooms - have been - the same... If we'll - straight on... Might be - same," he whispered, the words barely audible.

That did make sense, though the way Daniel sounded, going on would not be easy, let alone a very good idea. A third roar, sounding louder this time, left Jack feeling that they were out of options.

When they hit a wall instead of a door, Jack could barely keep himself from yelling at it and the general, merciless unfairness of the universe. This was a nightmare. A really bad one. Worse than any he could remember right away. Except that it was really happening.

"I'll risk a bit of light," he whispered. The dino might be rooms away, it might not see it, he told himself.

The light showed that the nightmare might not come to a gruesome end in this room, after all, not yet. There was a doorway in the wall they'd reached, it just wasn't where it'd been in the previous rooms.

Now that they'd found the wall, they could just as well keep following it, leaning on it instead of each other. But Jack was afraid he'd lose Daniel in the darkness, or miss it if he should fall, so he reached for his hand.

This was getting just ridiculous. They were advancing more and more pathetically every passing minute - first, leaning on each other, then doing the same in pitch-darkness, and now, slouching ahead leaning on the wall, hand in hand, Daniel leading the way and Jack coming right after him.

After what felt like an eternity, they finally reached the doorway. Jack nearly lost his grip when Daniel practically fell through it, slumping to the floor in the next room. Jack landed next to him, reaching to put an arm around his shoulders. It was the best comfort and support he could give in this damned darkness.

Though they were one room further away, the roar sounded just as loud, making them both jump.

"Jack - this - this isn't-" Daniel was trying to whisper between coughs or gasps or both.

"Shh, we'll be okay. We can take a tiny break now."

"But - nowhere we can go - down here..."

"This seems like a big maze. Plenty of places to go. We'll find our way out before the dino finds us."

"Tombs - only have - one way out... In Egypt..."

"Well, we're not there, and we don't even know if this is a tomb. And I'm betting that the way out is right behind the next doorway," Jack said, without really believing it himself.

Nevertheless, he took up the flashlight again and lit it for a blink. It showed a doorway, again in the opposing wall, which was actually nearer than in the previous rooms.

"Daniel, you could just stay here and rest, I'll go and check the next room. You saw it's not far," Jack told, though he really had no idea how he'd go about doing that. Following the walls for support would make the distance a lot longer.

"No way-" Daniel started, but another coughing fit took over, and all he could do was to try and keep it as silent as he could. It went on terribly long - Jack was starting to fear Daniel would pass out. And all he could do was wait, with a supporting hand on his back.

Finally, it passed, and Daniel got to finish his sentence, "-not going to stay - when it comes."

"Let's get going, then," Jack decided. He knew that Daniel wasn't up to it, but the alternative, leaving him to face the dino alone in the dark, was even worse. "One last stretch, right?" he said encouragingly as he stood up, and helped Daniel get up as best he could.

Screw the short distance, it felt like a mile, as they struggled on, arms around each others' back. Daniel's pained breathing sounded so loud that Jack was sure the dino would hear it, no matter how many rooms away it was. But they made it, made it through to yet another room - and it was different from all the rest. The relief was so great that, combined with the persistent headache, it made Jack feel dizzy.

Light was shining to the room through a doorway, again straight ahead of them, and not all that far.

"Okay. I may have lied about that having been the last stretch. This is gonna be it," Jack declared.

Daniel was probably too out of breath to answer anything at all. They staggered towards the light. Daniel was leaning on Jack now, and Jack could hardly stay standing. His leg kept trying to fold beneath all the weight.

Miraculously, they managed to cover the distance to the lit doorway and beyond, into a small room at the foot of a steep staircase leading up. Daylight from the ground floor flooded the room, nearly blinding them, and bringing some of the tropical warmth with it.

The dinosaur growled somewhere behind them again, but Jack thought it sounded different. Farther away than before. Maybe they had really escaped this time.

  


* * *

  


Blessed light. Blessed light and warmth. Escape. Freedom.

It was so cold down here. Daniel was shivering. He desperately wanted to get to the ground floor again, to the hot and humid air of the rainforest, but they still had the stairs to climb, and he had to admit he didn't think he could make it.

Both his sides were aching now, from all the coughing and who knew what else. He had started coughing up stuff when they had been on the run. He didn't know if it was just phlegm, or something worse. Like blood. He wasn't sure if he really wanted to know, either. Jack had probably not noticed it at all in the darkness.

Daniel slumped to the floor as soon as they were inside the illuminated room, feeling too spent to even think anymore, just fighting all he could to get air in. Panic quickly grabbed hold of him when he realized it was no good.

He couldn't breathe, no matter how hard he tried. As if there was no air left in the room. He was drowning on dry land.

Jack got to him instantly, propping him up against his chest. Sitting up had helped before, at least a bit. It did help a bit now, too, but it didn't feel like it was enough. His vision was starting to fade.

Jack's voice sounded as if it came from somewhere far away. He was shouting, telling Daniel to "Keep breathing, dammit, fight, come on!"

He wanted to, of course he did, he had absolutely no intention of dying here, not when they were so close to the way out. But he just couldn't.

He plunged into the darkness. Back to the cold, gloomy tunnels.

  


* * *

  


Teal'c was beginning to grow truly impatient. He and Captain Carter had soon searched through what he took to be nearly half of the second floor, the entire area over the halls they had seen on the ground floor, and the area that might possibly have been over the part where Colonel O'Neill and Daniel Jackson had been. They had seen no signs of any sort of access to the lower level.

They had received the communication from the SGC as expected. Of course, they had not had much news to give. Captain Carter had suggested, though, that if the SGC could afford it, backup might be a good idea. Perhaps even a medical team, as a precaution. It seemed clear now that these ruins were indeed the great rectangular structure they had seen in the UAV feed, so they were quite far removed from the gate. It would take time for any help to reach them, and they knew O'Neill and Jackson were injured.

Teal'c found it odd that the distance between the ruins and the gate should be so great, and that there had been no signs of any structures, not even a road or a path, in the rainforest between them. Then again, these ruins were obviously very old. Perhaps they had been abandoned thousands of years ago. The story of the dinosaurian Goa'uld's had to date at least five thousand years back, since it took place before the time of human hosts.

They had been walking around for some time after the call from the SGC, when a voice came through their radios again.

"Carter, Teal'c, come in, please!" Colonel O'Neill called, sounding distressed.

"Sir! Are you all right? What happened?" Carter replied instantly.

"Long story, and no, we're not. Daniel's out, and looking pretty bad. And I can't walk. We seriously need a hand here. What's up with you guys?"

"We communicated with Stargate Command a quarter of an hour ago, requesting assistance," Teal'c informed him. "Currently we are exploring the second floor and attempting to find a way to access your side of the complex."

"That's good. Keep trying. See, we got stuck in the basement, but found our way out. We're at this staircase leading up now... We walked in a straight line, directly away from where we first were. So we might be near to the far end of the ruins looking from there. If that helps you at all."

"This information is very useful to us. We shall do our best to find you, Colonel O'Neill."

"I know you will, Teal'c. Just hurry up, will ya."

  


* * *

  


Daniel woke up to the excruciating pain tearing through his right side, and the sound of Jack swearing right next to his ear. It took him a while to realize that he was breathing. He wasn't dead.

He opened his eyes and did his best to figure out what was going on. He was in a really awkward, odd position, hanging on Jack's back, his hands pulled over Jack's shoulders. Having his right hand stretched out like that was what made his bruised side feel like it was being torn apart.

Jack was crawling up the stairs, cursing and grunting, actually carrying Daniel on his back. Daniel could only imagine the effort it took - Jack's breathing didn't sound that light, now, either. Daniel wanted to shift, to do something to help Jack and ease the sting in his side, but it wasn't easy. He ended up grasping his left hand tightly around Jack's neck as he tried to let go with his right.

"Jeez, Daniel, trying to strangle me?" Jack grunted, and stopped. Daniel let go of him and sagged to sit on the stairs. He had the weirdest feeling that they were swaying under him, like the deck of a ship.

"How's it going?" Jack asked him cautiously.

"Not dead?" Daniel answered, feeling a bit uncertain about that.

He'd been suffocating, hadn't he? Now he felt like he was breathing through a thick cloth or something, and pain blazed through his chest each time he tried to take a deep breath, but that was better than no air at all. A lot better. He was still cold, though. It should've been warmer already, if they were any closer to the surface.

"Definitely not dead. No way I'd let you. No, you just passed out and scared the hell out of me. Don't do that to me again. Ever."

Passed out? Well, he'd clearly done that, since there was a blank, dark space in his mind between the moment when he'd been about to stop breathing, and the one where he woke up dangling on Jack's back.

The cough was still there, too, Daniel noted absently, when it gripped him again. He didn't even try to fight it. If the dino hadn't left them alone already, it'd probably find them anyway. He spat the stuff that came up on the stair next to him. It looked reddish against the light gray stone.

Jack shifted on the stairs, reaching a hand towards him. He rested his fingers on the side of Daniel's neck, and then, a hand on his forehead. It felt cool against his skin.

"Daniel - didn't I make it clear enough that catching pneumonia was right on top of the list of very big no-no's?"

  


* * *

  


O'Neill would not have needed to tell them to make haste. They would have done it anyway. Teal'c had a good idea of where they were in the ruins - as far as possible from each other. And even if they reached the corresponding location on this floor, it might not help. They might have no way down, no way to reach the others.

He did not wait for Captain Carter to speak up as he began running towards the direction that he took to be the correct one. She followed silently. He knew their thoughts were likely to be very similar - worry and wonder over what might have happened to the others.

Now that they were in a hurry and were headed in a certain direction, they were advancing fast. Still, it took them much longer than Teal'c would have wished. As large as the ruins were, half a mile was not a great distance to cross, but they kept running into dead ends, which left them unsure of which doorway to choose.

Finally, they had traversed the entire ruins, reaching a corner room that Teal'c estimated to be directly above O'Neill's and Daniel's current whereabouts. There were no stairs there, and they had not seen any on their way towards this room, either.

"No, this just doesn't make any sense! There's got to be some way we can get to them!" Carter complained. 

Teal'c agreed with her frustration, although he was beginning to find it more and more likely that these ruins were simply of a very curious build, and indeed had parts that were completely sealed and inaccessible from each other.

"This hall is not large enough to stretch through the entire width of the building. There must be other rooms at this end, next to it. We should inspect them as well," he suggested, if only to give them some hope and something more to do.

They had some trouble finding a doorway that would lead to a room adjacent to the corner hall. No rooms close by had doorways opening to the correct direction, so they were forced to wander around again. They kept running.

When they finally found a suitable doorway, approached it and gazed in through it, they saw that they'd found what they had been looking for all along. The room only had a small area of level floor, and then it began to fall steeply in a stairway leading down.

"Thank God," Carter uttered.

Teal'c did not rejoice as much as she did. He still had doubts. They could not be certain that these stairs would help them at all. If the ruins were symmetric, the stairs might only take them back to the ground floor, so that they could come across yet another wall separating them from O'Neill and Daniel.

They leaped through the doorway and started descending the stairs. The moment Teal'c looked ahead, down along the stairs, he saw that his worst doubts had been too pessimistic. The staircase was long, clearly longer than the one they had climbed earlier, and had a large landing in the middle. That landing, Teal'c reasoned, was at the ground level. The stairs continued downwards from it, towards some lower floor. Halfway between the landing and the shadowed bottom of the stairs sat two figures clad in green uniforms. From such a distance, Teal'c could not tell for sure what their situation was, how badly hurt they were, and whether he and Captain Carter had reached them in time.

  


* * *

  


Glad as Sam was to find the others, far ahead and below on the stairs, seeing them didn't lessen her worry at all. Yes, they'd found them, but how'd they go on from here, she wondered, when she and Teal'c ran towards them. If Daniel was unconscious and the Colonel unable to walk, how were they going to make it back to the gate?

Jack and Daniel were looking downstairs, their backs turned towards Sam and Teal'c. They hadn't noticed that help was on the way.

"Sir! Daniel!" she shouted at them.

They turned to see where the sound came from - both of them, so Daniel obviously wasn't unconscious anymore. They waved at her and Teal'c, but didn't get up. The Colonel lifted a finger to his lips, signaling silence. She had no idea why he did that, but she didn't say anything until they'd finally made their way across the landing on the ground floor and then below, all the way down to them.

"Teal'c! Carter! Good to see you," Jack welcomed them.

Daniel greeted them with a slightly breathless "Hey," and a smile. She didn't know what, exactly, had happened to him. He was clearly paler than usual, except for the feverish red on his cheeks, and his breathing sounded troubled. 

"Good to see you too," she answered them, crouching next to Daniel. "So, how're you doing?" she started.

Jack shook his head at her. "Not now, Carter. We need to go. We might get company."

He stood up, and Teal'c offered his hand for support. It wasn't hard to tell from the look on the Colonel's face that putting any weight on his foot was really painful. On the other hand, it was hard to say anything more than that just by looking at it. The BDU leg had been cut open, and through the slit, she saw some bandaging, hopefully adding up to a splint.

Daniel made to get up as well, but Jack stopped him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "You've ran enough already, let-"

All of a sudden, an ominous sound stopped them all, unexpected, but still awfully familiar. It sounded just like the dinosaur that had gotten them into this mess, the one that had attacked their camp last night. It came from below them, through a doorway at the bottom of the stairs. That had to be the company the Colonel had mentioned.

Daniel had stood up, swaying on his feet and coughing. Teal'c placed himself between him and the Colonel, so he could support them both, and Sam guided Daniel's arm over her shoulders. They started to climb the stairs.

They'd only gotten a few steps up, when the roar was repeated, really close this time. She turned to look behind, and saw the beast emerge through the doorway below. It was so big that it barely fit through. It had seen them, and it bellowed again. It might cover the distance to them in a few large steps.

SG-1 doubled their efforts to move as fast as they could. They were still slow. Daniel felt like a dead weight between her and Teal'c. Sam decided not to look behind again. Instead, she looked ahead, to see how far they still had to go. And she saw that they were caught between two fires.

At the landing, not too far ahead of them, stood another dinosaur. It was much smaller than the one below, probably even smaller than Sam, but it had teeth and claws that looked nasty nevertheless, and an oddly intelligent expression on its reptilian face.

The smaller dinosaur started running down the stairs, towards them. Jack pointed a pistol at it. Teal'c let go of Daniel and pulled his staff weapon, and suddenly she had most of Daniel's weight on her. But the dinosaur didn't come for them after all. It went right past them, leaping several steps at a time. Amazed, they put down their weapons and went on climbing the stairs.

Curious to know what was going on, she glanced back again. She saw the smaller dinosaur stop a few steps before the bottom, facing the much larger one. The bigger dinosaur did not attack it, did not do anything but stared and let out a deep growl.

The smaller dinosaur growled back. Its sound was completely different from the big one's - she imagined it sounded dual, like a Goa'uld's.

They got to the landing, and looked around. Besides the stairs leading up and down, there was a doorway leading to some ground floor rooms that they'd never seen before.

"You came from upstairs?" Jack asked in a low voice.

"Indeed, and we only found two stairways leading down from there: this one, and the one that would take us to a sealed door," Teal'c told him.

"I was kind of hoping we could get out the same way you got in," Sam said.

"That way was sealed too, and anyway, it's not going to happen with Lord Goa'uldosaur and his big buddy keeping guard down there," Jack quipped, making Sam wonder if she'd heard it correctly. 

"So, this way," he nodded towards the doorway. They stepped through it, into a long, narrow hall, like a huge corridor, with several doorways at the far end. They walked on along it.

Sam was trying to figure out which way they should go. They had no idea where they were, exactly, and if there were any exits here. She counted four doorways to the right and three to the left. Straight ahead of them, the corridor ended in a smooth wall.

As they got nearer to the end of the corridor, the smooth wall suddenly split in half and slid away, like a huge double-door. It happened without any sound at all. That must've been how their door out had been closed last night. Sam thought she saw something far ahead beyond the doorway, several dark green figures. More dinosaurs. She couldn't be sure, from this distance.

"We might not want to go there," Jack decided.

There was a doorway right next to them, to their left, and they turned towards it, but three dinosaurs, of the same species as the small one, stepped through it, stopping in front of it. On their other side, similar dinosaurs were emerging to guard the other doorways. They weren't doing anything. A few of them hissed, but most only stood there gazing at SG-1. 

They turned around to find that their way back was equally blocked. Seven dinosaurs stood in the corridor behind them, and they knew that returning to the stairs would only mean returning to the big dinosaur anyway. The only way still free and empty of dinosaurs was the stretch of corridor leading to the huge doorway.

"Looks like - they want us - there," Daniel panted.

"Well, let's humor them, then," the Colonel said, surrendering to the situation. 

They walked ahead, eyeing the dinosaurs warily, but none of them moved to attack. They reached the end of the corridor and stepped in through the doorway, into a hall twice the size of the largest one they'd seen before. At the far end was a throne of stone and gold, and on it stood a dinosaur - one of the small predators again. Several others stood by its sides, and even more were spread out in the hall.

The dinosaurs surrounded them silently, and with anxious motions of snouts and sharp claws, started urging them towards the throne. They had little choice but to do as they wanted them to.

  


* * *

  


Jack leaned on Teal'c and limped ahead, doing just what the damned lizards wanted him to, once again. He had the feeling that they'd been driven on all the time. That the whole fiasco had been set and planned before its beginning, by some dino-mastermind. Some Goa'uldosaur. The way the huge dino had attacked their camp and hunted them, all the time guiding them towards this place. The small dinos had forced them to the basement, and there, a big dino had been ready to keep them going. 

As they reached the foot of the totally tasteless, gold-and-jewel-crusted throne, their reptilian escort stopped. Looked like they finally were where they were supposed to be. At least no one forced them to kneel in front of their lord. Looking at the dino's feet and tails, Jack figured that they probably didn't do a lot of kneeling.

On the throne stood the weirdest-looking dino Jack had seen so far. Its scales were several shades lighter than those of the others, there were deep creases between them, and wrinkles around its eyes and nostrils. Its claws were so long that they'd curved into small coils. It was wearing a golden circlet, some odd version of a Goa'uld hand device, and an assortment of other jewelry. Now that Jack thought of it, actually, the whole creature gave the impression that it was really old.

The old dino's eyes flashed, like those of any frank regular Goa'uld. It opened its mouth and spoke. Sort of. The voice was familiarly dual. It wasn't exactly the roar or the growl he'd heard from all other dinosaurs, but he couldn't even start to make up any words. 

Luckily, they had Daniel around, still conscious, breathing, and most of all, still thinking. He was leaning heavily on Sam. "It's an arcane dialect of Goa'uld - never heard anything like this - I can hardly understand half of it," he whispered.

"I understand some as well. We may combine our halves to create one whole," Teal'c noted. Jack couldn't help grinning at it.

"It's giving a speech of some sort - to the other dinosaurs - speaking about a celebration," Daniel translated.

The old Goa'uldosaur pointed a shaky hand at SG-1, and went on growling, now clearly addressing them.

"I can't believe this," Daniel shook his head. "I - I think it's apologizing - that we weren't supposed to get hurt."

"I hear this as well," Teal'c agreed.

"Well, you could tell it to make up for it by letting us go," Jack said sourly.

Jack hadn't really meant it to be taken as an order, but Daniel followed it nevertheless. As soon as the dino paused for a moment, he spoke up. He clearly did his best to sound as guttural and raw as the dino, but he got nowhere near to it. The way he had to stop to gasp every third word didn't make it a whole lot more convincing.

Daniel's words got an instant reaction from the crowd. All the dinos in the room started hissing at each other, grumbling in low tones and moving restlessly. Their aged leader raised both hands, and they all fell silent. It spoke again. Jack couldn't say a thing about its tone, whether it was any different from before.

Daniel hung his head. "Something about tradition - celebration again - that must be followed. And that we should - feel honored."

"I do not like the sound of this. I fear we are to be sacrificed in a ritual of some sort," Teal'c added.

"Well, we're not going to let that happen. We'll figure something out," Jack declared.

They'd have to figure something out - but right now, his mind was blank. There were way too many dinos around them for them to attempt anything at all.

A dino stepped out from the right side of the throne, approaching them. Its eyes flashed as well. Another host, but younger. It wore a leather belt with several pockets. Jack was almost certain he recognized it as the one that had lead the party that'd pushed them down the stairs. It barked something that sounded like an order.

"I'm pretty sure it's - telling us to surrender our weapons," Daniel said.

"We're not going to do that." Jack picked up his pistol and pointed at the creature. It stepped even closer, stopping right in front of Daniel, and slashing the air in front of his face with a clawed hand - Jack saw a glint of gold in it. It seemed to be wearing a hand-device as well.

"Uh... I think we'd better. Or..." Daniel muttered.

Jack didn't want to add dinosaur bites to Daniel's injuries. They'd just have to obey. Too many of them and not enough of us, that was always the case with the Goa'uld, wasn't it, Jack thought. He tossed his pistol and his P-90 in front of the throne. He kept his knife, though he didn't think it'd be of much use against creatures that had a dozen of their own always with them. Daniel let go of his zat, and Carter followed suite.

Teal'c hesitated with his staff weapon. Dino or not, a Goa'uld was a Goa'uld, and Teal'c had the hugest grudge against them all. He pointed the dino with the weapon. It returned the gesture with raising the hand-device menacingly in front of Daniel's forehead. Startled, he tilted his head back.

"Teal'c-" Jack hissed.

Teal'c bowed his head, and handed the staff weapon to the dinosaur. It withdrew its hand and barked some more, but Daniel didn't translate the words. Jack raised his eyebrows at him in a question. He shook his head. "Different language. No idea."

"I have not heard such speech before, either," Teal'c confirmed what Jack could've guessed.

Clearly following some orders the Goa'uldosaur had growled, several other dinosaurs stepped forth and surrounded them in a circle much closer and smaller than their previous escort. Their guardian-Goa'uldosaur turned its snout towards the older one on the throne, and it grumbled a low reply. The younger Goa'uldosaur picked up something from its belt.

Accompanied by the familiar sound, a set of rings landed around them from the ceiling and took them away from the throne hall.

They found themselves under direct, blazing sunlight. Jack blinked and had to raise a hand to cover his eyes. It had never been this bright in the rainforest. He looked around, and quickly figured out that they were on the roof of the temple complex. 

He saw several structures on the roof, small buildings of their own. They weren't given much time to see the sights, but were pushed on. They crossed a large pool of water - it was probably gathered rainwater, and Jack reasoned it might be lead to the lower levels through some waterways.

Beyond the pool stood rows and rows of cages, with walls and roofs of thick iron bars. Some of them were really massive, and a few of them contained dinosaurs - a huge one had one of those big long-necked plant-eating things in it, a Brontosaurus or something like that.

They were taken to a small cage, with bars set close enough to each other that a human, or a human-sized dino, could not slip past them. At least they were put in the same one, all four of them.

  


* * *

  


Daniel sank to the floor in the cage, closing his eyes. He couldn't stop shivering from cold even though he felt the relentless tropical sun shining on them. The air felt way too thick. And he was so tired he just hoped he'd never need to get up again. Someone - probably Sam - placed something under his head as a pillow.

He heard the metallic clank as the dinosaurs closed the door after them. Only a few seconds later came a hiss of static and a voice through the radio.

"Come in, SG-1, this is SG-2, I repeat..."

Jack answered it instantly with an angry, "Not now, Ferretti!", but it was too late.

The door was opened again, and the commanding growl of the Goa'uld-dinosaur followed. Daniel didn't recognize half the words, but it wasn't hard to deduce that it wanted their radios. Jack had figured that out too, and by the sound of his colorful reply, he wasn't too happy about it. He gave it away anyway. The dinos seemed to be really good at convincing people. Might have had something to do with all the teeth and claws.

Someone approached Daniel with odd, clicking footfalls. He opened his eyes. It was one of the dinosaurs, its curved claws clicking against the stone floor as it walked. It had come to make sure they got all the radios. Well, Daniel wasn't going to put up a fight. He handed it out without a word.

The dinosaurs walked away. Clang, the door was closed and locked.

"Shit," Jack swore again. "Just when... Well. At least we know help's on the way. Somewhere. We just haven't got the slightest idea how far they are... Probably... ...near the gate... before..."

Jack went on speaking, but his voice was fading away. Or probably it was the other way around. Daniel was drifting, falling asleep... Sleeping felt like a very good idea. He'd go to sleep and wake up somewhere nice and warm, where breathing was easier and didn't hurt so much...

Sam's voice, calling his name, came from so near to him that he couldn't avoid hearing it. He forced his eyes to open and peered up at her worried face. She held a cool hand on his forehead.

"He's burning up - Sir, what exactly happened to you two? What's wrong with him?"

"The dinosaur tossed him," Jack started. Sam's blurry face took up a puzzled frown. Jack went on explaining it all, Daniel's rough landing, bruises and broken ribs, and what else, he didn't know, he said, and neither did Daniel. Jack mentioned pneumonia again, too, which did sound like a pretty good explanation to how Daniel felt at the moment. He'd had it before, though, as a kid, and it hadn't been anywhere near this bad.

Sam was doing her best at playing doctor, poking fingers at the worst possible spots in Daniel's injured side and commenting to the others. He wasn't really following it.

"I agree, sir - we can't really know... Recognizing and assessing internal injuries is hard even for trained medical staff... ...get help and fast..."

Daniel tried to ignore her, to fall asleep again. He thought he did, for a second there, but she wouldn't let him.

"Here - take these," she offered him a few pills and a sip of water from the canteen.

"Now, sir, I should probably take a look at your leg," Sam said, somewhere far above him. Looked like she was going to leave him be, now.

"If you must... Daniel!" Jack shouted at him, suddenly right next to him, shaking his good shoulder gently. "Don't go to sleep. I need you to stay with us until help gets here. Teal'c, keep him company, will ya?"

"Teal'c - maybe you should explain him the story about the Goa'uld-dinosaurs," Sam suggested.

That caught Daniel's interest instantly, and he tried to concentrate on it. Was there a story of these dinosaurs? Something that would explain this odd, unlikely culture?

"Indeed. Now, are you listening to me, Daniel Jackson?"

Daniel nodded. He wouldn't risk wasting what precious little air he could get on speaking.

"I heard this story as a child, and never believed it to be true. Only when I first came across the creatures known as dinosaurs, I began to doubt that there might be something to it. What we saw in that hall below proved it once and for all. The story goes thus..."

Teal'c began recounting the tale, probably repeating it almost word for word as he had learned it in his childhood. It was elaborate, even though Daniel was sure Teal'c left out most of the praise to the Goa'uld that would originally have been there.

It was the story of a Goa'uld who had, long ago, found a world of dinosaurs and chosen the best of them all to be his host. Something in it rang awfully familiar to Daniel, but he just couldn't point a finger at it. Choosing the best... There was something about it that he needed to figure out.

The most curious thing was that the story gave no clue of what happened to this Goa'uldosaur later. Clearly something had left him on his own, isolated from other Goa'ulds, since no one knew of him these days. Of course, the ancient-looking dinosaur on the throne might not have been the Goa'uld of the stories at all, but one of his offspring.

Considering what he had seen on this world, in this temple that they had taken for ruins, made Daniel think that there was an air of degeneration, of decay, about it all. The throne and the few pieces of jewelry on the ruler had been the only hint of the usually lavish material culture of the Goa'uld. The growth of bushes on the ground level of the building clearly hinted of neglect.

Teal'c went on talking, wondering aloud how the dinosaurs might have come to exist on this world. His deep voice was so soothing...

Daniel only realized he'd been drifting towards sleep or unconsciousness again when he was pulled out of it by the sound of the cage door opening and closing. Apparently someone had brought them food and drink, because soon after, Daniel heard Jack comment, "At least they aren't trying to starve us. And some of this stuff might actually be edible."

Daniel was definitely not going to eat anything. He was too much afraid he'd just end up choking on it.

  


* * *

  


Teal'c was surprised to see the dinosaurs' offerings. There was raw meat, which he could have expected, but some roast meat as well, and even fruits and nuts. The tray also contained an old-looking, dented metallic pitcher and a set of goblets.

"Water, by the look and smell of it," Captain Carter declared. Now that they did not need to save their resources, she was quick to pour some of the liquid on a piece of cloth and place it on Daniel Jackson's forehead.

It was obvious that Daniel was not doing well. He had stayed silent all the way through Teal'c's story, except for his fast, wheezy breathing. If Colonel O'Neill's guess was correct, and Teal'c had no reason to think it was not, then the backup had only just come through the Stargate. It meant that, even if they moved at full speed, it would take them up to eight hours to reach the ruins. They could only hope Daniel would hold on until then. At least Captain Carter had given him some medication which might help against the illness that had assailed him.

Teal'c noticed that another dinosaur was approaching their cage, stepping slowly and turning its head from side to side. It looked wary.

"So, T, what kind of dinos are these anyway? Except that they're Goa'ulds?" O'Neill asked.

"I am uncertain. The head resembles that of a species called Troodon, although it is much larger - they are somewhat too large in general, and their hands seem abnormally long for any dinosaurs I have read of."

"So, maybe they aren't of any species anyone could know," Captain Carter suggested. "Maybe they've evolved. Become smarter, and developed the ability to use their hands, like our ancestors did, in the distant past."

"Perhaps so, although I have seen many dinosaurs here which do not seem to have evolved."

"Well, we can't know how long the Goa'uld have been here, can we? Maybe they've influenced the dinosaurs long enough that it actually brought on these changes."

The wary dinosaur had reached the door of their cage, but did not open it. As far as Teal'c could see, it did not even have the key. It stared at them with large, intelligent-looking eyes, and croaked a few words. Teal'c was certain it asked "Who are you," but before he could think of an answer, Daniel Jackson had suddenly sat up.

"Daniel-" he introduced himself, and added something that Teal'c couldn't catch in a croak similar to the dinosaur's. "It wants - to know - who we are," he explained to the others, seeming to force the words out with much difficulty.

The dinosaur spoke up again, and a faint shadow of a smile reached Daniel's face. "That's - his - name."

"Well, he'll always be Barney to me," O'Neill said. Barney was indeed much easier than the creature's true name, although it bore little resemblance to the purple dinosaur in the children's show.

Daniel Jackson spoke some more in the dinosaurian-Goa'uld-dialect, asking what was going on, and why the dinosaur had come, but the guttural words brought a fit of coughing on him. Colonel O'Neill, being unable to walk on his injured leg, crawled to Daniel's side to steady him.

Teal'c did not think he could speak the dinosaur's language so that it would understand. Its sounds were so unfamiliar to him, and he had no training in such matters. At least he understood it well enough. He could make out most of its answer to Daniel Jackson. It said that many of its kind were curious of SG-1 - most of all, curious of how one of them could speak their language. And that some of them had begun to question their captivity. Teal'c told this to the others.

"Daniel, if you just can, ask what they're going to do with us," Jack suggested, a hand still held around his shoulders.

Daniel nodded, and addressed Barney again, translating O'Neill's question. Teal'c saw him frown at the dinosaur's reply. He picked up many words of it himself, and did not like what he heard. When the dinosaur finished, Daniel's face seemed to light up with understanding and discovery.

"The ceremony! It's - remembrance of choosing!" he uttered, and lapsed into coughing again. This time, it sounded even worse - as if he could not breathe at all. As Colonel O'Neill coaxed him to fight it, Teal'c spoke up, adding his explanation to Daniel's words.

"It must be in honor of the first time the Goa'uld arrived on this planet, when he chose this particular species as his host. Apparently, this ceremony is more of a test or a race, where different beings are sent to the maze to compete. And I am certain that the winner is always of the same kind, and that the loser will be gone."

"Yeah - yes," Daniel gasped his agreement, and added a few more word in the dinosaurian tongue. He asked for help.

Barney gave a long answer. First, it expressed its regret of their situation. If Teal'c got it all correctly, it said that it would help them if only it could. Then, it told that for the ceremony, they would be required to choose only one who would take part. Finally, it said that it would return later, and walked away.

  


* * *

  


Sam stared after the departing dinosaur for quite a while. She still had a hard time believing that they'd actually come across a culture of dinosaurs who could not only speak and use tools, but apparently also wrote texts and built temples. Of course, this was all Daniel's field of expertise, not hers, but it was intriguing nevertheless - how much of it was just Goa'uld influence, and what would have happened if the Goa'ulds had never set foot on this world. At least, without them, SG-1 wouldn't have had this ceremony to worry about.

"I volunteer to take part in this ceremonial race," Teal'c offered. "It is likely to turn out to be little more than a hunt."

"Teal'c, no - no one's going. We'll figure out something before that," Colonel O'Neill said firmly.

The Colonel was still holding on to Daniel, as if trying to keep him from falling apart. Unfortunately, it would probably take more than a firm grasp to help him, and there was only so much Sam could do. The antibiotics would only work if he had bacterial pneumonia, and no amount of drugs of any kind would fix internal bleeding. She tried hard to convince herself that that wasn't what was wrong with him - that the small amounts of blood he had coughed up were just a freak side effect of the infection - but she couldn't be sure. And even if it was, fluid gathering in his lungs would have exactly the same results.

At least Daniel was still slightly better off than the Colonel had been when Sam had been stuck with him in Antarctica - as was the Colonel. O'Neill would definitely not be walking on that leg for a while. Without question, it was clear that neither of them would be up to the dinosaurs' ceremony.

That left her and Teal'c. Out of the two of them, Teal'c would probably be the better pick. He understood some of the dinosaurs' language, he was a better tracker than she, and stronger, if it should come to fighting. Nevertheless, she suggested,

"I could go as well, sir. Now, we don't know the rules of this race - it might offer one of us a possible way out. If they really send two beings to find their way out of the maze, like lab rats in a labyrinth..."

"Yeah, except that unless I got it wrong, they won't accept a human as the winner," O'Neill was still against the whole idea. "Anyway, do we know when this race is gonna happen? In ten minutes or sometime tomorrow or this time next year? We might have more than enough time to wait for SG-2. If only Barney could get us our radios."

"Tonight," Daniel commented, his voice hardly louder than a whisper. "It happens - tonight."

  


* * *

  


Jack was finally convinced enough that Daniel wasn't going to faint right away, and set him to rest on the ground again. Even under the burning rays of the afternoon sun, the heat emanating from him was impossible to miss. If he had pneumonia and nothing more to it, sleep would probably be a good thing, but Jack was afraid to let him. He was afraid that Daniel wasn't about to fall asleep, but about to... To slip away from them. Horrible as it was, Jack was almost glad that his breathing was so loud. It would be hard to miss if he should... No, Jack didn't want to go there.

Setting his fevered friend down, Jack fervently tried to think, to figure out their options. They really hadn't got that many. Whatever the exact time of that mad race was, the backup would probably not reach them in time. Besides, now that the dinos had taken their radios, they had no means to let the cavalry know where they were and what the situation was. SG-2 might just get captured too.

The cage was well built, leaving SG-1 without any chance of breaking out of it. The keys - Jack didn't know who had the keys. It didn't look like anyone was keeping constant guard anywhere nearby. Maybe the younger Goa'uldosaur had the keys in that leather belt. Jack couldn't say he was much of a judge of character when it came to dinos, but that Goa'uldosaur had felt like the nastiest of them all. Meaner than its old man, or granny, or whatever its relationship to the ruler was. No way they were going to get the keys from it.

Barney was their best hope. A very faint and uncertain hope at that. They had no idea of his motivations, if he was sincere in wanting to help, and if he was in any position to help them anyway. Jack wanted to believe in him, but, for crying out loud, he was a meat-eating, hunting dinosaur, smart and talking or not. Definitely the weirdest ally he'd ever had. And out of all the people he knew, Daniel was the only one who could make friends with the monster from Jurassic Park.

No matter how hard he thought, the only plan Jack came up with was waiting for Barney to come back. If he would come back. He stared at his watch. 5 PM. 5:01. 5:02. The minutes were dragging on so very slowly. No sign of Barney. Teal'c had translated that the dino had promised to come back 'later'. Whatever that meant.

Carter was poking at the food on the tray. At least the nuts and dried fruits should be safe enough, and maybe the cooked meat as well.

"Wonder what kind of a creature that was," Jack noted, pointing a finger at it. "One of the little ones, or the huge big things that walk on all fours, or what."

"Looks like chicken," Carter noted. That, of course, made Jack think of Daniel right away, and he turned his head. Teal'c was keeping Daniel company again. They were talking about the dinos' language, or at least Teal'c was. Daniel was mostly just nodding or shaking his head. At least he was still awake, and not looking significantly worse. Maybe the medication Carter had given him really had helped.

And the meat really did look like chicken, it was the same color. Jack tore a piece of it, and took a bite. Just like chicken, or maybe crocodile. On the other hand, crocodile tasted like... chicken.

"T, Daniel, you'd better try some of this stuff too. I've got this feeling that we've a long day and night ahead of us."

Teal'c nodded and walked to take a closer look at the tray, but Daniel just shook his head. Jack made his way over to him, and offered him some water from the canteen, since they weren't quite sure about the water the dinos had brought. He accepted it with a grateful smile.

They had all fallen silent for a while, Teal'c and Sam chewing some dino food, Jack eyeing Daniel with concern like he'd been doing for most of today, and Daniel staring ahead with glazed eyes and breathing heavily. 

The unmistakable sound of claws clicking against stone told them that a dino was approaching. All eyes turned to see who it was - Jack helped Daniel sit up again so he could see as well. Not that Jack could tell one dino from the other. They looked all the same to him.

Teal'c could, apparently, since he declared, "Barney has not betrayed our trust."

Barney greeted them in his familiar growl, and Daniel replied something that sounded equally freaky. 

The dinosaur went on explaining for quite a long while, with Daniel commenting a croak here and a grunt there. Then, Barney pushed something into the cage from between the bars. The key, Jack thought, hopes rising for a while, but no, that wasn't it. Teal'c stepped ahead to accept it. It looked like a thin, small slab of stone. An artifact for Daniel, Jack thought. Teal'c had clearly got the same idea, since he brought it over. With that, Barney growled a hasty goodbye and went away.

"Its story was complex, and I could not follow all of it," Teal'c explained. "However, it made clear that nothing can be done to prevent the ceremony from taking place, or to keep one of us from participating in it. As to the rest, it had gone somewhere, and brought this, and I caught little more than that, except that he will try to return again."

Daniel was peering at the stone slab, his forehead crinkled with concentration. "Yes - a library - I think. Abandoned - history. Interesting - no help."

Daniel's intermittent speech was nearly as hard to figure out as a distorted radio conversation. So, the dino had been to a library and brought them - what, an interesting piece of abandoned history? The 'no help'-part didn't sound promising, though.

  


* * *

  


Thinking was so hard. Concentrating was nearly impossible. It took huge effort to listen to the dinosaur... Barney, like Jack had named him - his real name was something like Ghhrrwuaghr... It was amazing how the language was grammatically just like Goa'uld, lexically so near to the archaic forms of the language Daniel knew, but phonetically so completely different... Of course, it was natural, due to the anatomy of the dinosaurs' speech organs...

"What do you mean, no help?" Jack asked, calling his rambling thoughts back to the issues at hand.

He could offer them no help for now, Ghhrrwuaghr had said, probably meaning that he couldn't get the keys, or medical help or anything... But he would try to come again later, if he could, although it was difficult, with all the preparations for the celebration... And visiting the prisoners too often would not do, since the prince, called Rrragrathssh, or some such, was suspicious of anything out of the usual - probably because he wanted to take power for himself, removing his senile father from the throne...

Jack was staring at him questioningly. How was he going to put that all into words when he could hardly speak at all? All he got out was, "No help - later - maybe..." before he started coughing again.

Luckily, it wasn't a particularly bad bout, and he recovered quite quickly. He peered at the stone tablet the dinosaur had brought. He'd expected it to be in the odd writing he'd seen on the walls, but instead, it was written in an old form of Goa'uld - probably contemporary to the very first years of Ra's rule in ancient Egypt.

"I cannot read this writing," Teal'c told.

Daniel didn't need to say a thing to that. He was already reading the text. He was hardly even aware of the way everyone was staring at him in silence, let alone of the fact that he was still leaning on Jack's shoulder.

The text was so amazing that even though it didn't offer them any help, Daniel was glad Ghhrrwuaghr - Barney had brought it. It was an official letter from the System Lords - signed with their names, many of which were awfully familiar, including Ra and Belus... The text declared that the addressee, a Goa'uld by the name of Wahera-Hurugh - clearly a finer spelling of a dinosaurian name - formerly known as Garcath - which was a Goa'uld name Daniel had never heard before, but that was not surprising, considering the fact that he'd disappeared out of history, never taking a human host and entering Earth mythology, like...

Jack was shaking him gently, and he realized he'd been starting to nod. He blinked, trying to focus his eyes on the text again. It declared that, due to Garcath's failure to respond to earlier claims against him and his unwillingness or inability to follow the generally accepted rules and recommendations, Wahera-Hurugh was thus deprived of his status as one of the System Lords, and more than that, outcast, excluded from the society - and even more than that, his fleet destroyed... There was no mention of the Stargate - as if they hadn't know it was here - was it possible that they didn't, that it had been lost in the rainforest for millions of years?

But clearly, the other System Lords had left this Goa'uld trapped on this planet, on his own... He must have been too strange, too savage, even to the other Goa'uld. Since he did not rule anymore, he had probably met his end on this planet, stabbed in the back by one of his own offspring, one of which ruled now, though just about to be removed in the same manner... And here SG-1 were, caught, at their mercy.

  


* * *

  


Hardly ten minutes had passed since Barney's departure, when the rain began. Teal'c had been hoping that it would not come at all, but it was inevitable, at this kind of a climate.

Large drops splattered against the iron bars above their heads and dripped on them. They had no shelter of any kind, and soon they were all soaked. Puddles were forming on the floor, and from them, the water flowed into a shallow canal at the side of the cage, which probably lead to the great pool they had seen earlier.

When the rain had began, Colonel O'Neill had attempted to hold a jacket over Daniel Jackson, but it had hardly helped at all. At least the cool water might have a favorable effect on his raised body temperature.

Daniel had finished translating the stone tablet Barney had brought. His explanation of its contents had been somewhat hard to follow. Teal'c had understood that it told the origin of this Goa'uld-dinosaur culture, which had to do with a disinherited System Lord by the name of Garcath. Teal'c had never heard this name before, but the Goa'uld's name was not given in the old story he knew.

They had little more to do than to wait for Barney's return, once again. Hours passed without anything remarkable happening. There was no change in the shower falling on them, no sign of dinosaurs except for a solitary hoot of some Hadrosaurian creature in a cage far removed from theirs, and no change in Daniel Jackson's ragged breathing. The sun sank below the horizon, and the moons rose. Teal'c spent most of the time in meditation, sitting cross-legged in a corner of the room.

A little over an hour before midnight, the pale light of two full moons revealed a party of dinosaurs approaching their cage. Barney was not among them, but Teal'c recognized their leader from afar as the Goa'uld prince.

"Barney, Barney! We trusted in you," O'Neill muttered. "Should've known better than to trust a lizard - snake-head or not..."

O'Neill had been convinced that they would find another way out of this situation, one that would not require them to participate in this ritual. Apparently, they had none. The party of dinosaurs that stopped in front of their cage door was too large that they might hope to win them without weapons.

The Goa'uld-dinosaur opened the door and took a few steps into the cage. Two dinosaurs followed by his sides as bodyguards. It barked a word of command at SG-1, telling them to stand up in the presence of their superior. Teal'c translated this to the others, and Daniel Jackson confirmed it with a nod.

Trying to oppose this Goa'uld would only have made things worse, so they obeyed. Teal'c helped Colonel O'Neill stand up, and, together with Captain Carter, lifted Daniel Jackson up as well. He needed the support of them both to stay upright.

The dinosaur prince walked a round around them, its cold, reptilian glance scrutinizing, sweeping them from head to toe. Finally, it spoke again, asking them which among them was best, strongest and most honorable.

"Choose - participant," Daniel Jackson uttered, stating the true meaning behind the question.

Teal'c ventured to try a few words on his own in the dinosaurian-Goa'uld language. Making sure that both O'Neill and Carter would support Daniel, Teal'c stepped ahead and said, "I am" in words that he hoped the dinosaurs would understand.

The prince growled approvingly. It seemed to have come to the same conclusion simply by looking at them. It told Teal'c to follow.

They had just got out of the cage, when Daniel Jackson stopped them, addressing the dinosaurs in their own language. He was telling them not to take Teal'c, that they mustn't take him, that they could not take him. Teal'c knew him to be a compassionate man, but he was still surprised that he should act in such an irrational manner.

The Goa'uld-dinosaur stopped and turned around, leaving Teal'c amidst its bodyguards. Daniel went on, offering an explanation, speaking more clearly and eloquently than Teal'c had heard him do all day. He was trying to reason with the dinosaurs based on the text of the tablet. He croaked that their ceremony would go wrong if they chose Teal'c. That he, and all of SG-1, were of the kind who were the true chosen ones of the Goa'uld, and that choosing a dinosaur had left their first ruler isolated from all others of his kind, from all other gods.

The Goa'uld prince did not seem to accept Daniel's reasoning. It was only growing mad, hissing and clicking its claws against the wet stone floor. It growled at Daniel to fall silent, to stop his blasphemous speech. He answered, stubborn as ever, that the prince had to know what he said was true, that they had the proof written down in stone.

Teal'c could do nothing but watch in horror as the dinosaur brought its hand device upon Daniel Jackson, with a bright blue flash of light unlike anything he had ever witnessed from such a weapon. Daniel collapsed instantly.

Teal'c tried to step back into the cage, but the dinosaurs would not let him. They closed in on him. The prince stepped out of the cage and slammed the door closed, still appearing irritated. The dinosaurs began urging Teal'c on with such determination that he knew resisting would only do more harm. He did not see how badly the attack had harmed his friend.

The sight of Daniel Jackson crumpling to the floor haunted Teal'c all the way through his silent walk escorted by the dinosaurs. They lead him away from the sizable area of the roof that contained the cages, past the pool of water again, and across the large plain area where they had emerged from the transport rings. They crossed another bridge over another similar pool, approaching a building decorated with massive pillars. It filled a large part of the roof. They entered it, leaving the pouring rain behind.

Inside the large hall, they walked down a lane in the midst of a crowd of dinosaurs, all of the same species. The walls of the hall were carved with similar images as the ones in the lower floors. It was lit by large globes of light hanging from the ceiling.

Across the hall was a throne quite similar to the one below, though less decorated. On its both sides, in the corners of the hall, were areas separated from the rest, the left-side one with a fence of iron bars, the one on the right merely with a silvery chain.

Behind the silvery chain stood a group of the small predators who were everywhere. Some of them were even smaller than usual. Teal'c guessed that they were young ones. It dawned on him that this ceremony was likely to be a rite of passage, an initiation to them. 

Behind the bars were several dinosaurs of numerous species, and that was were Teal'c was taken. Among the other lesser beings. The door was closed after him, and the guards retreated to the crowd. Ignoring the restless dinosaurs around him, Teal'c stood right in front of the bars, gazing at the hall, waiting for whatever was to come.

Teal'c observed the other beings that were in the fenced area with him. A young Saltasaurus, long-necked and tailed, walking on four feet, filled nearly half of it - an adult one would not have fit in at all. The second-largest creature after it was a Corythosaurus, a crested being with sad eyes, whose sound Teal'c thought he had heard before, when he'd been in the cage. An ostrich-like Struthiomimus was running nervously around the two larger dinosaurs. A tiny, shy, pale green creature, just like the ones SG-1 had first met on the planet, did all it could to avoid being stepped on. 

Chained to the back wall was the most dangerous-looking dinosaur of them all, one that was quite similar to the ruling predators, only somewhat larger. Possibly a Deinonychus. It was bucking against its chains, a low growling coming from its throat, though its jaws were tied together.

The mutter, the low growling and hissing of the dinosaurian crowd, was silenced when a figure adorned with gold stepped into the temple, and made its way across the lane, to the throne. It was the old Goa'uld lord who ruled the dinosaurs, but it was quite unusually dressed: it wore a mismatched suit of Goa'uld armor, and twice the amount of jewelry it had had before. Two steps behind it, on its both sides, walked two dinosaurs wearing equally ill-fitting pieces of Jaffa armor.

The ruler rose on the throne, raised its hands dramatically and spoke to the crowd in its Goa'uld voice. From its way of speaking, slowly, one word at a time, Teal'c could guess that its speech was ceremonial. The celebration, the ritual, had begun.

  


* * *

  


The blue flash engulfed Daniel, and without even realizing it, Sam cried out, startled.

Some technical corner of her mind was taking notes in a cold, detached manner. The visible effect of the Goa'uld-dinosaur's hand device looked exactly like a zat blast. Maybe it was actually the same. Perhaps this type of hand device was the first existing form of the weapon nowadays known as the zat'ni'katel. It might have been the privilege of Goa'uld lords alone before the technology became more common and available to their soldiers as well.

Right now, Sam couldn't have cared less about the technical details of the weapon. She was far more concerned about what its effects were. If they were similar to those of a zat, then one blast might not be too bad.

She saw in the corner of her eye how the group of dinosaurs left, forcing Teal'c to move on. There was nothing they could do to stop them.

She and O'Neill knelt next to Daniel. He had landed on his side, curled into himself, his knees pulled up and his arms hugging his chest. The Colonel gently turned him to rest on his back - he just landed there limply, eyes closed - unconscious, or worse. Sam couldn't hear his breathing anymore.

The Colonel had already placed his fingers on Daniel's neck, hoping to prove their worst fears wrong. Sam saw his face tense with worry.

"Got a pulse, but it's really weak."

Sam held a hand over Daniel's face, but didn't feel a thing. As far as she could see, he wasn't breathing.

"Daniel, goddammit, if you'd just listen to what I say - Come on! - Come off it," O'Neill tried, shaking his shoulder and slapping his cheek, but it had no effect as far as she could see.

She crouched over Daniel, covered his mouth with hers and breathed for him. All the while, the Colonel kept shouting frantically. She didn't catch the exact words, but the meaning was very clear.

She'd hated the sound of Daniel's cough earlier on, but now, coming after a seemingly endless moment of rescue breathing, it was the most wonderful thing she'd ever heard. They rolled him on to his side, and instinctively, he spat out the blood and mucus blocking his airways.

As the cough abated, they helped him on his back again. O'Neill had found his flashlight, and shone the light on Daniel. Sam thought there was a slightly bluish tinge to his skin. She could just hope he hadn't been out for too long.

"Daniel, talk to me," O'Neill ordered, grasping Daniel's shoulder tightly. "Don't go to sleep."

"Ow... Jackh?" Daniel murmured without opening his eyes.

"Yeah. The one and only. I told you not to do that to me again, didn't I, Danny?"

"Uh..."

"Just take it easy. The big bad Goa'uldosaur got you with the dino-version of a hand device."

"Wha..." Daniel's eyes opened wide. Apparently, he was all awake and back in the here and now. "God - Teal'c!" he uttered, the two soft words carrying more emotion that Sam would've thought possible.

Daniel was still with them. It was night already, and help could not be that far away anymore. They still had hope. But Teal'c - Oh God, Teal'c, like Daniel had said - they didn't know what would happen to him. He was on his own now.

  


* * *

  


The Goa'uld-dinosaur ruler declared that it was the lord Wahrhwrgh, come to this world, his chosen world, to select the one who would be given all glory, all joy and all life, eternally. For this, a trial, a race, would be held, the winner of which would gain all he had mentioned, and those who lost would perish.

Wahrhwrgh was the dinosaurian name of the Goa'uld who had come to this world, and Teal'c knew that this was not the actual name of this ruler. It was simply his role in this play, this strange ceremonial retelling of what had happened long ago. Of course, when the Goa'uld had actually been here and chosen his host, he had most likely done it in a manner very different from this.

The Goa'uld-dinosaur finished its speech, declaring that they would now face their destiny. The silvery chain surrounding the young predators was lifted away, and they marched out of the hall, lead by one of the Jaffa-armored dinosaurs.

Once they were gone, the second Jaffa-dinosaur, accompanied by a large group of other guards, approached the enclosure where Teal'c was. Escorting him and all these other "lesser beings" offered them quite a challenge. Teal'c was surprised to see how docile the large herbivores were, walking ahead on leashes like over-sized horses. On the other hand, the Struthiomimus attempted all it could to run away, and the Deinonychus kept trying to claw at its keepers.

All this activity left Teal'c with plenty of time to think, but no matter how he thought, he could not come across a plan as to how he could escape. There were hundreds of the predator dinosaurs in the hall. They would tear him to small pieces if he should try to run. Barney had to be somewhere among them, but he was only one solitary dinosaur, and he would probably face a dire fate if it tried to help Teal'c.

As he and the haphazard troupe of dinosaurs were lead down the lane, Teal'c thought of his friends again. Of Colonel O'Neill, Captain Carter and Daniel Jackson, still caught in the cage, in the pouring rain, anxious and unknowing of what was happening here... And he hoped against hope that Daniel Jackson had not been severely harmed by the Goa'uld hand device. No matter what would happen in this race, Teal'c would fight it and overcome it, and help his friends out of peril.

They walked out into the rain and onto the large opening where the transport rings were. Teal'c was at the tail of the procession. Ahead of him, the dinosaurs which were small enough to fit into the rings together with a guard were taken somewhere through them. Those that were too large were taken down a set of stairs at the other side of the roof.

Teal'c and his guards followed soon after the other small beings. They emerged in a hall about the size and shape of the throne room, but without the throne. Many of the other participants were there already - the Struthiomimus, the small shy creature, and five of the ruling predators. The others had probably been taken to different floors of the complex.

One of the Jaffa-suited dinosaurs was in the room as well, and it shouted two commands: it told the guards to leave, and they all headed for the rings. Then, it said, "Begin."

The young predators flashed into action - Teal'c witnessed two of them attacking each other. One ran out of the room right away. The smallest one of them leaped on the small dinosaur, slaying it instantly. And the remaining one was staring right at Teal'c.

Obviously, the predators knew the goal of the game. Teal'c did not. Judging by what he saw here, it was to kill the others and survive. He wanted to avoid fighting these creatures, especially now that there were so many in the same place. His goal was not to fight, but to escape, and with friends' lives at stake, he did not care for honor.

There were four doorways leading out of the room, one in each wall. He picked one at random and ran out. The dinosaur who had seemed to be about to attack Teal'c did not follow him, but ran after the Struthiomimus instead.

Teal'c found himself in a room just like the ones he had seen on the second floor: smooth walls and a doorway in each wall, except for one. But here, he saw no windows. The dim light in the room came from small lamps in the ceiling. He had to be in the basement, where Daniel Jackson and Colonel O'Neill had been earlier.

He thought he heard the sound of a dinosaur approaching the doorway through which he had just come, so he ran ahead, hoping to avoid an encounter and to gain some time to think. The next room was identical, with three doorways and smooth walls.

It was just as Teal'c had suspected: he was in the maze, and he was probably supposed to find his way - somewhere. His first thought was that he needed to get out. However, this ritual race was based on Goa'uld thinking, which Teal'c knew all too well, and somehow, out did not sound like the right direction.

The solution dawned on him, so obvious that he was almost ashamed he had not thought of it right away. He was not supposed to leave the complex. He was supposed to find his way into the very center of it. Into the throne room. The center, the heart, the most important place of all, was where the ruler was.

The first step in getting there was to deduce where he was now. Teal'c did not know much of the layout of the basement, but he did know the approximate location of a set of stairs that would lead him right to the corridor outside the throne room. And he thought he also had an idea of his current position compared to it.

Teal'c stopped for a while to consider if he truly should go to the center. The race was a combination of a test in tracking and intelligence, finding one's way in the maze, and simple combat, the ability to survive when all participants were out to kill each other. Teal'c had no need to win, no willingness to gain glory from these Goa'uld-dinosaurs. He only wanted to get out and help his team. But he knew that the exits could be sealed, and it was likely that they were, to prevent competitors from escaping.

Perhaps winning was his only option. Proving to these dinosaurs that he represented, as Daniel Jackson had told them, the true chosen hosts of the Goa'uld. As much as he resented admitting it. It would be likely to create chaos and uncertainty among the dinosaurs. Perhaps it would even convince them to stop worshiping the Goa'uld.

A growl echoed in the room behind him, but another voice soon replied it, and the sounds of combat followed. Teal'c felt relieved. The young predators were so eager to fight that they might finish off each other without him needing to engage in combat at all.

He set out running towards the direction he deemed correct. As nearly every room had a door in each wall, he had no trouble keeping it. It took him no more than ten minutes to reach the room with the familiar stairs leading all the way to the second floor, with the landing at ground level.

He'd just gotten into the room, when he once again heard a growl from behind, and a heavy weight landed on him, knocking him down. Claws sunk into his back. One of the host-type dinosaurs had made it out of the maze, surviving all fights, and he was about to become its next victim.

Teal'c struggled to get up, grimacing at the pain. The dinosaur let go and fell off him. Now that he was facing it alone, he had a chance. It was much lighter and smaller than he.

He had no need to fight elegantly or fairly, he only needed to finish this fast. He cast all his weight against the dinosaur and rammed it against a wall, crushing it. It was a heavy blow for the creature, and left it dazed for the fraction of a second. That was all it took for Teal'c to snap its neck.

Leaving the lifeless creature behind, Teal'c began ascending the stairs. He felt blood flowing down his back from the cuts he had received, but he could manage the pain. He had to. For his friends. As he climbed up, he spotted another predator dinosaur approaching him, making its way down the stairs from the second floor. They would meet on the landing. And, of course, they would also fight.

The dinosaur leaped down the last few stairs, attempting to land on Teal'c, like his previous attacker had done. But this time, Teal'c was expecting it, and was able to dodge. He caught the dinosaur off-balance, and sent a powerful kick at its midsection.

It was taken aback. It had clearly not thought it would meet any resistance. It returned the kick, and it was somewhat nastier than Teal'c's. He tried to block it with his hands, so the dinosaur's sharp claw tore a long cut into his arm.

He kicked at the dinosaur again, and felt his foot hit its snout with force. He didn't give it any time to recover, but pounced on it, forcing it to the ground, again taking advantage of his greater weight. He managed to place one foot on the dinosaur's long, snake-like neck, squishing it hard against the ground. It squirmed all it could, trying to get away, or to wound him badly enough that he would let go. It did scrape his legs, but he was so determined, so intent on winning, that he hardly noticed it. Finally, the dinosaur stopped struggling. It twitched once more, weakly, and then it was gone.

Teal'c stayed on the landing, leaning on the wall, listening, waiting to see if any more dinosaurs would come, if there were any more left to challenge him. None came. Teal'c had won.

He stepped away from the dead dinosaur, out of the room, into the corridor leading to the throne room. From afar, he saw that the two Jaffa-armored guards were waiting for the winner to arrive - and he knew the winner was not what they expected. He did not know how they would react. If they would attack him, he would face a fight he would not be able to win, alone against two dinosaurs, and already wounded.

They did not attack. As Teal'c entered the throne room, they gazed at each other and exchanged a few growled words - not in Goa'uld-dinosaurian, but in the tongue of their own that neither Teal'c nor Daniel understood.

One of them left instantly, using the rings again. The other ran to Teal'c, and addressed him in the Goa'uld dialect.

"I am a friend of your friend," it told him, and asked him to follow, to hurry, because the other guard had only left to ask for advice and would return soon.

A friend of Teal'c's friend - it could only mean Barney. Perhaps this was another dinosaur who had opposed SG-1's captivity. Teal'c saw no better course of action that to do as it told.

The dinosaur was holding a remote control of the sort that was used to operate the transport rings. Now, it waved its hand at a wall on the right side of the throne. A door opened in the wall, leading directly into a familiar-looking hall. Teal'c recognized it as the seemingly doorless hall he and Captain Carter had found when they had first explored the ground floor.

Teal'c was staggering, dizzy from the blood loss and the pain, but he kept going. They ran across the hall, back to the very first hall Teal'c had seen in these ruins. The one where the door had been sealed behind them. The door was still sealed, but the dinosaur waved the device at it, and it slid open silently.

The dinosaur spoke again, but this time, Teal'c did not understand all of it. It told him to go free. It also mentioned his friends - but what about them, that he could not figure out.

Before he got to ask again, the dinosaur ran back the way they had come. Teal'c ran as well, through the doorway, out into the rainforest. Into freedom - all alone and uncertain of what had happened to the rest of his team.

  


* * *

  


Sam had examined Daniel as thoroughly as she could in the present circumstances. She didn't find anything new nor surprising. It really did seem that the hand device attack had been just like a zat hit - Daniel even agreed it had felt the same. The pain and shock of it had been enough to make him stop breathing.

Now, Daniel was hanging on again, though just barely. He was hardly even conscious anymore, and the way his breathing sounded, it was obvious there was something in his lungs that definitely wasn't supposed to be there. Awful as it was, Sam couldn't lie to herself nor to the Colonel.

"Sir... I don't think he's going to make it through the night," she whispered to him, standing as far from Daniel as they could in the cage, hoping that he would not hear. "Unless we get help soon..." she shook her head.

"Help should be here any minute now. Somewhere near here, at least. SG-2 know that we're at the ruins. They'll find us," O'Neill said adamantly.

Sam didn't need to remind him that the gate was a long walk away from the ruins. She knew that he knew it perfectly well.

The complete lack of anything useful or helpful to do somehow felt even worse now that Teal'c wasn't around. Keeping constant watch by Daniel's side, trying to wake him every now and then to make sure that he was still with them, was pretty much all they could think of. The rest of the time they spent worrying about how Teal'c was doing.

The nearly ceaseless growling and hissing of a very large crowd of dinosaurs reached them from some other part of the roof. That was probably where Teal'c was. At times, it grew louder, and it paused a few times as well. It had to have something to do with the ceremony, whatever it was.

The noise really peaked sometime over an hour after Teal'c had left. It sounded like a fight out there, or a riot. They could only guess what was happening. Maybe it was a part of the ceremony as well.

Soon after the racket had begun, they caught the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps. Sam got up and walked to the door, gazing through the bars. She saw a lone dinosaur running towards them. It was carrying something around its arm - she couldn't quite make it up in the pale light of the moons.

It stopped right in front of the door and growled at Sam. Of course, she had no idea of what it was saying. She cast a glance at Daniel. The Colonel was already trying to rouse him. He opened his eyes, but didn't say a thing.

The dinosaur didn't wait for an answer. It opened a fisted hand, revealing a key, and opened the door. Then, it simply stood aside and waited, motioning with its hands and head that SG-1 should get out.

O'Neill had again helped Daniel to sit up, and tried to encourage him to talk to the dino. "Daniel - what's this dino up to? What's going on? Is it Barney?"

Daniel nodded, probably answering the last question. It was Barney. He had really returned to help them, although much later than they had hoped. Daniel croaked a dinosaurian word at Barney, who answered at length. The dinosaur had begun stepping nervously at his place, by the open door.

"Teal'c won," Daniel announced, though his faint, near choking tone didn't relay much joy. "Unexpected - There's - coup - rebellion - riot... Hurry."

Simply sitting up and speaking a few words seemed to take what little strength he had left. He closed his eyes and leaned back, to rest against O'Neill. Luckily, those few words had been enough to give Sam a pretty good idea of what was going on. Apparently, the ritual hadn't gone as the dinosaurs had planned, Teal'c had won, and it had led to a disturbance of some sort. Teal'c had won - so he had to be all right, and maybe he had even made it out. And this offered SG-1 the perfect chance to escape.

"Sorry, Danny, but that 'Hurry' clearly means we've got to go," O'Neill said, standing up, one hand on Daniel's shoulder.

Sam walked over to help him, wondering how they'd ever manage to get Daniel out of this place. He was way too sick to walk, even with support, and the Colonel needed a lot of help walking as well. There was no way Sam could carry Daniel on her own.

O'Neill had figured out the same thing, and was trying to convey it to their dinosaur friend. "Barney, we could use a hand... Or a tail, or whatever. See, Daniel's pretty sick-"

The dinosaur was intelligent enough to grasp the meaning though it knew none of the words. It stepped closer, and crouched low right next to Daniel, waiting. Sam was quite amazed to see that. The dinosaur was shorter than she, and couldn't weigh a lot more than any of them. On the other hand, it did seem to have the strong muscles of a wild predator, friendly and civilized though it was. She and O'Neill helped Daniel on Barney's back.

"Hang on tight. You get to be the first human ever to ride a dino," O'Neill told him. He wrapped his arms around the dinosaur. Barney stood up, looking a bit wobbly under Daniel's weight, but he did manage it. He took the lead, running out of the cage. From the door, he didn't turn where he'd come from, but to the opposite direction.

  


* * *

  


Though Barney was carrying a half-conscious Daniel, he was still moving pretty fast. Jack had a hard time trying to keep up with him, limping on with Carter's help. He had no idea where the dinosaur was leading them, but Jack figured he probably had a plan of some sort.

He began to doubt that, when he realized that they were approaching the edge of the roof. With two floors full of huge halls above the ground, the building wasn't exactly low. They'd be walking into a dead end.

When they stopped at the low rampart that separated them from the fall to the jungle floor, Barney revealed that he really had thought about this after all. First, he crouched again, and Daniel slid to the ground. Then, he held out his hand. Jack hadn't noticed it before, but a coil of sturdy rope was hanging from it.

"Not bad, Barney, not bad at all," Jack told him, hoping he could figure out the approving tone.

"Sir, we can't be sure it's safe down there - there might be an army of dinosaurs waiting for us right below," Carter reminded. "Let me go first. I'll signal you if it's all right."

"Sounds like a plan to me." Jack would rather have gone first, himself, but he knew he couldn't do it. He couldn't even walk. If he'd find himself in the middle of a dino riot or something, he'd be dead. Carter was the only one of the three of them who really could go first.

The nearest cage was right next to the rampart, so they tied the rope around one of the bars.

Before she went, Carter knelt by Daniel's side, cupping his cheek with her hand. "See you soon, Daniel," she said.

"Take - care - Sam," Daniel whispered, peering at her through half-closed eyes.

She grabbed the rope and climbed on the rampart.

"All right, Carter. One pull for OK, two if it's not. You'd better be careful. Beware of angry dinos," Jack told her.

"Sure thing, sir," she declared, and disappeared over the edge.

Jack stayed by the rope, resting a hand on it, so he wouldn't miss her signal. It was a really tense wait, with Carter out of sight. Jack could still hear the dinos fighting somewhere not too far. Daniel's rattling breaths were a really strange contrast to that noise. Barney was standing on the tips of its clawed toes, looking as nervous as a dino could get.

"Yess!" Jack whispered to himself, when he felt Carter tugging at the rope. He waited for a bit longer, but that was all. She'd only pulled once, telling that it was safe.

He'd need to get Daniel down first, and he couldn't think of an easy or nice way to do it. He pulled the whole length of rope up the side of the building again, and tied it around Daniel's waist.

"This is probably going to hurt your side... If you can just stay awake and climb down yourself, you know, grab the rope with your hands and place your feet against the wall, it'll be a lot easier," Jack told him.

Daniel nodded, but didn't say a thing, and Jack couldn't be sure he'd really understood. The sooner he got Daniel down, the sooner he'd get help. With huge effort, Jack lifted him on the rampart, and grabbed the rope.

"All right, Daniel... I really don't want to push you over..." Jack uttered, pulling the rope tight. "I'll lower you down. You'll just have to trust me."

Daniel had taken a look over the edge, and shook his head. His breathing sounded fast and shallow. "So high..."

"I know, Danny, but this is probably our only way out of this place. I've got you, don't worry."

Daniel growled a word at Barney. The dinosaur walked to him and nuzzled the side of his head with its snout. Jack would never have thought a predator dino could do something as gentle as that.

With a deep sigh, eyes closed, Daniel crawled over the edge. All of a sudden, all his weight was pulling at the rope. Jack bit his teeth together and held on to it tightly, ramming his good foot against the rampart. He started lowering Daniel as slowly and steadily as he could. It felt horrible, doing it without seeing him at all. Jack could only hope he was taking support from the rope and the wall instead of hanging there, unconscious, with the rope digging into his bruised side. 

It was equally scary to feel the weight suddenly disappear. He couldn't really be sure that it was Carter who'd let Daniel off the rope, could he? What if the knots had just given in and he'd fallen down? The fastest way to find out was to get down as soon as he could.

"Barney, buddy," Jack said to the dinosaur, who was still hopping about nervously. "You're one incredible dino. Thank you for everything."

Barney stepped closer, and put his chin on Jack's shoulder. An odd dino gesture, that, and awfully sweet. 

"Now, now, Barney. We're not that good friends yet," Jack muttered, climbed on the rampart, and then over the edge, starting his descent down the side of the building.

Jack hadn't realized how tired and sore he was, and how much lowering Daniel had taxed his strength. The wall of the building felt like Mount Everest. An amazing feat. He felt his hands shaking at the effort... And slipping. 

His grasp slipped just slightly, and he caught the rope again, but he was sliding, the rope burning the skin of his palms, until he hit the ground. He hit it pretty hard, too, and didn't feel like getting up again.

"O'Neill! Don't worry, the cavalry's here," Lou Ferretti's voice greeted him, and a second later, his face appeared above Jack's.

"Ferretti. Great timing," Jack smiled at him. "How'd you find us?"

"We didn't. Teal'c did. We saw him come out of the ruins, and he told us you were on the roof. We were just wondering how the heck we could get you down when he spotted Carter climbing down the wall."

Teal'c? Was Teal'c really here? Jack sat up so he'd get a better look. Nothing surprising about the surroundings - moonlit rainforest, and the wall of the complex right behind his back. But to his right, a medic was patching up Teal'c, who seemed to be bleeding from more cuts than Jack could count, and to his left, the rest of the med team was working frantically around Daniel. Carter stood right next them. Jack could guess she desperately wanted to help, but knew she'd just be on the way if she did.

"Colonel O'Neill," Teal'c called out. The relief of simply hearing his voice again was enormous.

"Teal'c! I hear you won the race. Great job."

"Indeed. Although I am not proud to think that the dinosaurs now regard me as the true chosen host of the Goa'uld."

  


* * *

  


"We'll return later, if we can," Daniel croaked at Ghhrrwuaghr in the very words the dinosaur had used earlier on.

A moment later, he felt the dinosaur touching his cheek. The scaly snout felt different from what he'd have thought. It wasn't cold, or slimy, like a lizard's might be, but warm. Like a hairless dog. Barney was saying goodbye to him.

He was awfully awake, now. He'd have to get down. He'd have to climb over that edge. Jack had him. Jack wouldn't let him fall... They were so horribly high up... He wouldn't look down.

Daniel took a deep breath and pushed himself over the edge. He felt the rope tighten, and he knew Jack was holding on to it... Lowering him down. What had Jack said... that Daniel should grab the rope and help with his feet. He did that as best he could, grasped the rope, and tried to put his feet against the wall.

The rope was terribly tight around him... But of course, it had to be, he didn't want to fall from this high... He'd already fallen one time too many... And he was definitely not going to look and see how high he was. The rope was digging into his side. It felt awful. His foot slipped, and the rope slid even higher up - too high - around his ribs - he couldn't breathe-

Panicking, he let go of the rope, just hanging from it limply. He had to be pretty near to the ground. He had to. But he wouldn't look. He closed his eyes. Almost there, he told himself. Keep breathing.

He was sure he was going to faint, bright spots were floating across his closed eyes - and then, he felt strong hands grasping him. They untied the rope and set him gently to the ground. Sam had climbed down first, but... Surely it wasn't just Sam? Daniel thought there were more than one pair of hands... He looked, and saw several people in SG-uniforms, but he couldn't recognize them in the dim light, not when they were so blurred... 

He did recognize Teal'c. Teal'c was here as well. Teal'c had won. All was well. If he could just get enough air.

He heard a thud from behind - not someone falling? Jack couldn't have fallen down - he was all right, wasn't he? Yes, there was Jack's voice - Jack talking to Teal'c.

Someone was prodding at Daniel's side now, which really didn't feel good. Sam had done the same thing earlier... Why wouldn't they just leave him be? Then, he felt a needle sting his arm, and slowly, the pain began to feel less overwhelming, he didn't mind the people poking at him... 

He was asleep, he had to be. They had finally let him go to sleep, to some good dream where he could breathe easier and nothing hurt anymore.

  


* * *

  


Daniel woke up to the bright light filtering through his closed eyelids, and the warmth it brought with it. The ground was swinging, or he was - anyway, it made him feel a bit nauseous. He wasn't feeling all that good, just in general. His side felt awful again, and the air was hot and humid, and so thick... Not to mention that his nose was itchy, and he was too tired to lift his hand.

He opened his eyes, and found he was strapped to a stretcher, with two people carrying him through the rainforest. There was green light all around. It was morning in the rainforest. The rainforest, where... Oh no, the dinosaurs... The ritual... But no, they had escaped. They had escaped the dinosaurs.

Sam was walking by his side. She looked really tired... The last Daniel could remember, it had been night. If it was morning, they'd been walking for a long time... No wonder she was so tired. She didn't notice he was awake... Conscious... sort of.

He closed his eyes, and probably fell asleep again, because the next thing he knew was the familiar, wonderful sound of someone dialing the DHD, and the whoosh of the opening gate. The sound of going home.

  


* * *

  


Jack frowned at the huge dinosaur skeleton in front of him. It filled half the hall, and its teeth and claws were really impressive.

"Ours was bigger," he noted to his three team mates. Looking at them now, it wasn't easy to guess which one of them had had the close encounter with the larger, living version of this tyrannical dino.

Jack was still walking with crutches, and his leg was still achy. Fraiser had given him a long and furious lecture on how broken legs weren't supposed to be walked on. But she hadn't been there. Jack had hardly had much choice at the time. He'd slept through half that lecture anyway.

They turned away from the skeleton and headed to the next room. Daniel was walking on his own two feet again, after weeks of bed rest. He'd been very sick there, for a while, and they'd all been terribly worried. Fraiser had diagnosed him not only with broken ribs and bruises all over his side, but also a bruised lung. That was the nasty thing which had kept him from breathing properly, and had lead to pneumonia, nearly killing him. Now, he almost looked healthier than Jack. Just a bit pale and tired. He did still seem wary of his side.

Teal'c - Teal'c was just - Jack couldn't help feeling a bit envious of him. He'd told them all about the race, about how he'd been running like mad in the maze with dinos fighting each other all around him, and finally fighting and winning a few himself. He'd come through with dino scratches all over him. Now, there wasn't a trace of them left. Maybe there just had to be at least something good about having a snake in one's gut.

Since Sam had come through uninjured, she'd probably had the hardest time of them all, with the rest of the team stuck in the infirmary. She'd had to divide her time between sitting by each of them. Of course, it hadn't taken long before Teal'c had joined her, and then Jack, and then it'd been the three of them by Daniel's bed, every day, until late night, when Fraiser had driven them away.

SG-1 stepped into another gallery. This one had smaller dinosaurs in it. Teal'c immediately picked one of them, pointing a finger at it.

"That is a Deinonychus. It bears a great likeness to the small predators who ruled the culture."

They walked closer to get a better look. Jack didn't really see a great likeness to the mean scaly Goa'uldosaurs. This was just a pile of really old bones. Even though it'd been set in a hunting pose, it was too small to look very menacing. On the other hand, they'd nearly always seen many of the things at the same time. That had made them way more scary. Actually, the only dino they'd seen all alone had been...

"So, this is Barney?" Jack asked.

"No, just a less-evolved form of a dinosaur similar to him," Carter corrected.

"And his name really wasn't Barney, you know, it was-" Daniel added, and suddenly let out a dinosaurian growl. Several other museum visitors turned to stare at him. He just smiled at them sheepishly.

"Barney was great. I hope he's doing all right, with that riot and all," Jack said thoughtfully.

"I'm sure he is. Besides, we'll find out," Daniel replied.

"What makes you think that?"

"Well, we'll go back, of course, one of these days. I promised him we would."

"Oh, that's what all the growling and the parting kiss were about!"

Carter and Teal'c had turned to stare at Daniel too, Teal'c with a raised eyebrow and Carter with a smirk.

Daniel shrugged at them. "Well, we don't really even know whether Barney was a girl or a boy..."


End file.
